


As the World Crashes Down

by Dont_touch_the_phlebotinum



Series: Machines, Gods & Monsters [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, Jötunn Loki, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-12
Updated: 2016-05-26
Packaged: 2018-05-01 08:15:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 38,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5198687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dont_touch_the_phlebotinum/pseuds/Dont_touch_the_phlebotinum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With SHIELD's true intentions hidden under depths of murky waters, Bucky and Loki strike out on their own. But with two powerful organisations now hunting them and an ever-diminishing list of allies, it'll take every shred of luck and ingenuity they have to get out of this scrape alive. And it turns out, they just might have bigger problems than SHIELD and HYDRA.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

This was perhaps not such a good plan as it had first seemed.

Loki forced his eyes open, blinking at the bright lights directly overhead, and tried to shift in place. For the effort it took with his body protesting his movements, he earned nothing good in return. He was bound to his chair, heavy shackles tugging painfully at his wrists and ankles as he tried to pull himself free. He should have expected as much. HYDRA wouldn't have gone to all this effort to capture him only to let him escape again once he regained consciousness. But that knowledge didn't stop Loki from struggling against his restraints, until he was quickly met with a sharp crack to the temple once his captors realised he was awake.

He bit out a string of curses in response. There were crueller insults in his own tongue, many Loki had been on the receiving end of countless times, yet there was little point in using them now. It was much more rewarding to be met with rage than confusion. But, to his disappointment, Loki received neither.

"Want me to gag this guy, chief?" said the HYDRA agent stood at Loki's feet, her gun trained on his chest while her gaze darted to someone over Loki's shoulder.

He couldn't tell how many there were in the room with him. It had taken some half-dozen or so agents to overpower him, even as Loki fought back only for show rather than with any real conviction, though HYDRA didn't need brute strength for this part. No doubt they had far more imaginative ways to hurt him.

Loki's nails dug into his palms at the thought. He was supposed to be long gone by this point. Why did he ever think this would be a good idea?

"Nah," came the reply. "Let him mouth off; see what good it does him."

A pair of strong hands from behind Loki's chair twisted his head to expose the side of his neck, and something sharp pierced his skin. Immediately an overwhelming heat swept though his veins, and Loki bit down on the inside of his cheek until the tang of blood filled his mouth. He could feel the guise he'd grown so accustomed to wearing slip away, though whether he had lost control of the illusion or it was the intended effect of the substance injected into him, he couldn't be sure. Either way, cold spread through Loki's body once again, chasing away the fire of whatever HYDRA had done to him, and his body relaxed into the soothing embrace of it.

Yet he didn't have long to savour his respite from the discomfort. One look up at the man moving to stand at his side was enough to know Loki had just given them exactly what they'd wanted.

"And there it is," he said. He was the same man who had spoken before, evidently the leader of Loki's merry gang of captors, and as such he also became the focus of Loki's growing rage. But at least the thought of snapping his neck the moment Loki was free offered some comfort. "You getting all this, doc?"

"We are indeed."

The bastards. Loki was about to open his mouth to call them as much when the man at his side roughly swiped a finger through the blood trickling from the wound on Loki's forehead. He peered down at the thick, dark blue blood covering his finger in disgust.

"You aren't even close to human, are you?"

"Does that make this more or less fun for you?" Loki shot back.

"I dunno," he said, nodding to the woman at Loki's feet. She lowered her gun and crossed to the other side of the room. Before Loki could twist in his seat to try and watch what she was up to something white hot pressed against the bare skin of his arm, the sizzle of burning flesh filling the air as he cried out. "It is pretty fun."

Loki gritted his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut as he tried to wrench his body away. He had about as much luck as he would have expected, had any form of higher thought not been silenced by the heat searing through his skin, the stench thick enough to make him gag. Yet he had sense enough to understand the purpose behind all of this, and the realisation steeled his resolve. Despite the pain, despite his every instinct telling him to fight back, Loki held fast. He could be free in seconds, his mind already racing through spells that would aid him in his predicament, though he would be helping HYDRA more than he'd help himself. And Loki was not the kind to ever cooperate willingly.

"Careful," someone said while Loki fought to remain conscious, and finally the scalding metal pressed to his forearm disappeared, "we don't want to kill him."

"Wouldn't be a tragedy if you did — it might put Barnes out of action for a while," the man at Loki's side replied, and Loki cracked his eyes open to glare up at him. "Come on," he added as he crouched level with Loki, "one last trick before you go?"

"You're going to die at my hands. Will that be enough of a trick for you?"

He laughed in response, though as he did so the sounds of shouts and gunfire erupted from somewhere within the building. It grew louder by the second, and the man straightened again, filled with purpose now as he readied himself for a fight. He'd have one soon enough.

Loki smiled to himself. It was about time.

Footsteps rapidly approached, and Loki forced his head up to peer towards the doorway as another agent came running into the room. "We've got company," he said, panting.

"Barnes?"

He nodded as he clutched at his side, still struggling to catch his breath. "And Captain America."

"Damn it." The ringleader dropped out of Loki's view for a moment, returning with a rifle in his hands as he stepped towards the door. "Watch him," he barked to the others while he pointed back at Loki. "If they get past us, slit his throat."

"Your hospitality is astounding," Loki said, before the man charged out into the corridor and a hand appeared from behind him to press a knife to his neck.

Silence crept among them, Loki's torture forgotten for the moment as they waited, listening to the fight unfolding outside the room. Even Loki stopped wriggling against his shackles to peer through the doorway. There was little point in worrying about trying to wrench himself free now. He'd be out before long.

The hand holding the knife to Loki's throat trembled, and Loki strained to glance back at the older man stood above him, staring towards the door with wide eyes. His breathing grew shakier with each long second that passed, until they heard another set of footsteps echoing through the corridor, quieter this time as their owner slowly crept towards them. After a moment the steps came to a halt, yet still nothing happened.

It was enough to send the old man into a panic. He pressed his blade against Loki's neck, though the moment it began to slice his skin Loki caught a flash of movement from the doorway. A knife came hurtling through the air faster than Loki's eyes could follow, and with a cry from the man behind his blade slipped away.

Bucky was in the room in an instant.

"You okay, Loki?" he called as he immediately set to work, engaging the first agent to reach him and slamming her headfirst into the wall while Rogers appeared in the doorway behind him ready to charge into the fray as well.

"You're late."

A grin flashed across Bucky's face at that. "Sit tight," he said.

Well it wasn't as if he had much choice.

But as much as Loki might have longed to repay his captors for the pain they had inflicted on him — and more for good measure — Bucky and Rogers were handling themselves well enough without his assistance. As he watched, Bucky fought off the last few agents left standing, dodging bullets and blades with practised ease, while Rogers dealt with the reinforcements spilling in through the doorway. After a few minutes of carnage, the sounds of snapping bone and Rogers' shield connecting with various body parts died down into nothing.

Bucky crossed the room to peer down at Loki. "I told you this was a dumb plan."

"Well now you have the satisfaction of being right," he said, while Bucky began to tug away the wires attached to Loki's chest and arms. "Anyway, you were outvoted."

"That's 'cause I'm surrounded by idiots." He wrenched open Loki's shackles as he spoke and held out a hand to pull Loki upright, but rather than release Loki's hand Bucky pulled it closer, studying his injured arm with concerned eyes.

Loki, for one, had no desire to take a closer look. Instead he gazed around at the room while Rogers picked his way through the bodies on the floor, crouching to check for survivors. He was unlikely to find many.

"So how does it feel to finally get back in the field, Rogers?" Loki said, swinging his legs over the side of the chair once Bucky had released his tight hold on Loki's wrist. He didn't bother to move further, though. He wasn't going to sit out of the fight only to help with the clean up afterwards.

"Just like old times."

Loki had stopped listening by that point. There were two men talking somewhere nearby, the sound of their conversation growing louder as their footsteps approached, and after a moment Coulson stepped into the room. He took in the sight that welcomed him without a reaction.

"Loki," he said in greeting, though it was the figure at his heels that had Loki raising an eyebrow.

"Why, Director Fury, did you come all the way down from your tower just for me?"

"I'm here to get a look at HYDRA's assets," Fury replied, before his gaze shifted to Coulson stood behind Loki's chair, studying the machines he had been hooked up to with interest. "How is it they've had a fully staffed, well-funded base operating right under our noses and we haven't sniffed it out until now?"

"We have to assume there are still double agents within SHIELD. They could have easily kept this place off our radar if they knew we were looking for it."

Loki rolled his eyes at that. Of course they could have done. For every agent exposed as a traitor, there seemed to be two more that carried on undetected, feeding information back to HYDRA and making the job of tracking the organisation's members down that much harder. He didn't know what SHIELD was doing with the double agents they did find, but if they weren't already torturing people for information, it was about time they started.

"Did you recognise any of the guys we took out on the way in here?" Bucky said.

Coulson looked grim when he gazed up to meet Bucky's eyes. "More than I'm comfortable with."

"Well," said Rogers as he dragged what Loki presumed were unconscious bodies towards the doorway, ready to be carted off with the others no doubt littering the rest of the building, "this should scratch a few more double agents off the list."

"Let's hope."

Bucky glanced down at Loki again, worry still heavy on his features, while the others set to work around them. "How you doing?" he said softly.

"I'm fine."

"What the hell were they doing to you?" He took Loki's chin between his fingers, turning his head to the side to peer at the cut on his neck while Loki grimaced. The others were looking back at him with interest when he twisted free of Bucky's grip.

"Trying to discover how I work," he replied, lifting his hand as ice spread between his fingers to emphasise his point, before his skin paled once again. The area around the wound on his arm remained unchanged, though it looked ugly enough already that the large dark patch of skin was hardly noticeable.

"If HYDRA's trying to get real magic on their side again, they were probably making records of this," Rogers said.

"Got it."

Bucky peered over Loki's shoulder while Loki twisted to look back in turn, watching as Coulson tapped away at one of the computers in the back corner of the room. He slipped something too small for Loki to identify out from his pocket and inserted it into the machine before his fingers returned to the keyboard. When he retrieved the device after a few seconds it turned out to be a flash drive.

"Do you think other bases will have access to that information already?"

"I don't know," Coulson replied, sliding the drive into the inner pocket of his jacket and giving it a gentle pat to make sure it was secure. "We'll look into it; it should be easy enough to find out if anyone else has seen this. Who knows, we might even locate some more HYDRA operations while we're at it."

Despite Coulson's optimism, there was still a frown on Bucky's face when Loki glanced over at him, though none of the others seemed to pick up on his obvious dissatisfaction.

"So what now?" Rogers said.

"I say we torch the place."

"We're not torching anything, Barnes," Fury said, staring down at his phone as they all looked his way. It was some surprise he'd apparently been paying attention to a word of their conversation.

"You wanna leave this place up and running so HYDRA can send the next bunch of lackeys to pick up where these guys left off?"

"No, I want to get our best agents in here and find out just what the hell HYDRA's up to. We need the place intact to do that." He glanced from Bucky and Loki to Rogers stood against the wall, and pressed his phone to his ear as he spoke again. "Go home. Your mission here is over."

Bucky stared back at Fury for a moment while Rogers stepped out of the room ahead of them, but whatever arguments he was clearly longing to make he kept to himself. He turned back to Loki with a huff and helped him to his feet.

Not another word passed between them until they were out of the building, piling into one of the vans that wasn't being loaded up with HYDRA's forces and speeding off the moment Bucky pulled the door shut behind him. It took little time for them to hit traffic — it seemed impossible to escape it in the city — though at least at this time of night there were fewer cars on the streets than usual.

"Tell me," Loki said, his eyes steadfast on Bucky sat opposite him, "how badly did you want to take a swing at Fury?"

Bucky smiled. It was the first time Loki had seen him do so since before they'd come up with this sorry plan. "I could take him," he replied.

"You would probably have the full force of SHIELD descend on you if you tried."

Bucky was just nodding in response when the van braked suddenly amidst a blare of car horns, jolting them in their seats, and Loki cursed at the swell of fresh pain in his arm. He closed his eyes and let out a long, shaking breath, looking back up again to see Bucky's gaze on him, his face stony once again.

"Steve, hand me that first aid box above you," he said as he slid out of his seat.

"That isn't necessary."

Even as Loki spoke Bucky took the box and knelt at Loki's feet, and Loki pressed his hand over the wound in a futile attempt to keep Bucky away from it. He trusted Bucky far more than he would hold faith in anyone else to patch up his injuries, but still he didn't particularly want anybody touching it. It would heal well enough on its own — and probably a good deal faster without interference. Yet when Bucky swatted Loki's hand away the wound still looked as bad as it had when it was fresh. He'd have thought it would be beginning to heal by now.

"My ass it isn't," Bucky said, pressing a needle into his arm while Loki scowled in response.

He snatched his arm back the moment Bucky had pulled the needle from his skin. He'd already had more than his fill of being prodded at with sharp objects for one night. "Is it customary among your kind to solve problems by injecting people with foreign substances?"

"You'd be surprised how often that helps," Rogers piped up, a wry smile on his face when Loki glanced over to him. At least somebody found this amusing.

"It's local anaesthetic," Bucky explained. "It'll kill the pain."

Whatever it was, it did seem to be working, the throbbing pain settling into an ache that was by no means comfortable yet certainly preferable to how it had felt. "Well in that case..." Loki said weakly.

He closed his eyes, focusing on the rocking of the van as his arm continued to numb, until finally they came to a complete stop. Stark Tower was stood before them, an imposing monolith climbing up towards the clouds, when Loki peered out through the windows.

It was almost as busy in the tower as it had been back out on the street while he and Bucky had headed inside. It often was; they had a habit of coming to and fro at all hours, and even in the middle of the night they would still find people in the lobby, going home at last or making their way back up into the heights of the tower to continue their work. None of them ever paid Loki and Bucky any mind. But then these were people working for a man who publicly flew around in a metal suit of armour — they had witnessed stranger things than the pair of them.

Once they had reached their lodgings within the tower Loki made a beeline for the bedroom and sank down onto the bed unceremoniously. Before construction had even finished Stark had set aside one of the building's guest apartments for them, deeming it theirs until they no longer had a use for it. Since they had barely left the city in the weeks since Rogers had been discovered, it had proved quite useful.

"Here," Bucky said as he stepped into the bedroom, and Loki forced himself back into a seating position. He pressed two of his sleeping pills into Loki's palm.

"Aren't you the one who's supposed to be taking these?" Loki popped them into his mouth regardless, arching an eyebrow when Bucky peered back up at him where he was crouched tugging off Loki's boots.

"They don't do me any good. How do you feel?"

"Better." He glanced back down at his arm and grimaced at the blistered, singed skin. He couldn't feel it anymore, which was some comfort, though the sight of it still turned his stomach. "More or less."

"Get into bed," Bucky said once he'd straightened. "I'll find some bandages."

Loki didn't have the energy to argue this time. It was usually a pointless endeavour to try and get Bucky to abandon something he'd set his mind to anyway. He pushed himself back on the bed while Bucky disappeared out of the room again, dropping his head onto the pillows without bothering to climb under the bedcovers first. A soft sigh fell unbidden from his lips as he made himself comfortable. Just the simple act of stretching out atop the mattress was almost enough to beckon him towards sleep, his eyes closed while he listened to Bucky rooting through cupboards in the kitchen area until the sound of his steps returned.

"Those pills kicking in already?" he said from the doorway. Loki could hear the smile in his voice as he spoke.

"I'm just enjoying the vague feeling of comfort," Loki replied. It was a vast improvement upon the pile of matted, bristly furs he'd spent his years attempting to sleep on back on Jotunheim.

"Think I'd rather have the torture chair again."

They both knew that was far from true, but Loki didn't raise the point. Bucky's footsteps shuffled across the thick carpet as he approached the bed, and Loki cracked his eyes open when Bucky dropped something down onto the mattress before taking a seat beside him. He pulled Loki's arm into his lap and pressed an ice pack against his skin, and as he did so his free hand slid down to grip Loki's. Loki gave it a gentle squeeze in return while his eyelids drooped closed again.

"I still don't get how you can sleep so easily on this bed," Bucky went on. "Don't you feel like you're gonna get sucked up into the damn thing?"

"No."

"I do."

A tiny smirk tugged at the corner of Loki's mouth. "Sleep on the floor if you'd prefer."

He looked up again to see Bucky smiling back at him, though before either of them could say anything there was a soft noise from the main room. It sounded like the apartment door gently pushing closed. A light frown creased Bucky's brow, and he twisted to reach for the pistol he kept on the nightstand while Loki strained to peer through the bedroom doorway.

There hadn't been much point, though. The main room was still in darkness, the light from their bedroom penetrating only a little way into the hall between the two rooms. Yet somebody was definitely approaching. The quiet sound of their footsteps grew closer, until Coulson appeared in the doorway.

"Were you going to use that on me?" he said as Bucky placed his gun back on the nightstand with a relieved sigh.

"If I'd have had to. Who the hell comes creeping into people's homes in the middle of the night?"

"Was I creeping?" He glanced back into the main room as if he could re-watch his actions to judge for himself. "I'm sorry; force of habit."

"What are you doing here?" Loki said, shifting to sit up as much as he could while Coulson crossed the room to stand at the other side of the bed.

"I came to make sure you were okay."

Loki scoffed. He and Bucky had both been injured during their service for SHIELD on plenty of occasions, and it had never warranted much concern. Coulson had seen them in action enough times to know it wasn't easy to slow either of them down.

"All right," Coulson said with a shrug. "I might have also wanted to know more about your time with HYDRA. Anything you noticed that could be of use to us."

"Where's the information HYDRA took on Loki?" Bucky said before Loki could answer, peering down at Loki's arm too intently as he focused on bandaging the wound when Loki glanced back at him.

"Safe."

"Safe with SHIELD?" He looked up at Coulson sceptically.

"Don't you trust me, Barnes? That cuts deep."

Bucky's expression didn't change, nor did the tension gripping his body. Coulson's light-hearted demeanour wouldn't be enough to steer him from this topic of conversation.

Loki dropped his head back to his pillow again and closed his eyes. In that moment he had little concern for what Coulson had done with HYDRA's files; he just wanted to sleep.

"What use would you have for that information?" Bucky said, his tone still sharp.

"What they gathered on Loki, not much, but there's a lot we could learn about HYDRA's resources from what they were looking for and how. It could give us a better idea of what we're going up against." Coulson paused, and when Loki gazed up at him he was looking back down to meet his eyes. "I'll let you get some rest," he said, giving Loki's leg a friendly pat before he turned to head back out of the room. "Give me a call if you think of anything."

Bucky's grip on Loki's arm tightened, and Loki glanced his way to see him staring after Coulson, his jaw clenched. But again he kept his thoughts to himself, turning back to finish dressing Loki's wound in silence.

"You're worried," Loki said, though it was some effort just to keep his eyes open, let alone carry on a conversation. Sleep was tugging more insistently at him now, and it was growing increasingly difficult to fight against it.

"This should be healing by now."

"That isn't what you're worried about. What concerns you?"

Bucky sat back and sighed, before shooting a furtive glance through the open door. "I'm just not sure SHIELD and HYDRA are all that different," he said, his voice low even after they heard Coulson close the apartment door behind him. "What's to say they aren't thinking of cutting you open to find out how they can use your powers too?"

"Are we going to war against SHIELD now as well as HYDRA?" He wasn't sure he'd have any real objection to that plan, though somehow he doubted it would end particularly well for them. It was only SHIELD's resources giving them the upper hand — if they actually held such — in their fight against HYDRA as it was.

"Actually, I was thinking we could just skip town and escape all of it."

"You wouldn't," Loki said, a fond smile spreading across his face, as he glanced back at Bucky. "What would you do with yourself if we did?"

Until these recent weeks, he couldn't think of a time Bucky had gone more than a few days between missions without getting antsy at the lack of action. How he expected to live his life that way, Loki didn't know. It was a subject Bucky had raised before, his desire for a real home rather than these borrowed quarters across the globe, but if he was honest, Loki doubted Bucky would be any happier away from this life. Whether he liked it or not, blood and battle was his calling.

"I'm sure I could find some way or another to get myself into trouble." He leant forward to press a gentle kiss to the corner of Loki's mouth, though before Loki could fist his hand in Bucky's shirt and catch his lips for a proper kiss he pulled back. "Get some sleep. I'll check in with you later."

He stood up and made his way towards the main room, and Loki watched him go with a frown. "You're not coming to bed?"

Bucky paused in the doorway to look back at him. "Not just yet," he replied, and Loki narrowed his eyes.

"If you're thinking of stealing that flash drive back from SHIELD, don't do it without me."

A warm smile crossed Bucky's face at that. "Wouldn't dream of it, sweetheart," he said, flicking the light off and plunging the room into darkness. The bedroom door softly clicked shut behind him as Loki settled back in among the pillows and sleep finally claimed him.

Faint light from the coming dawn was creeping through the window when Loki woke again, and he rolled onto his side to find the bed still empty beside him. That in itself was nothing new, yet Loki climbed out of bed and shuffled from the room to locate Bucky regardless. Most nights he would find Bucky in the main room, poring over history books or records of his time as the Winter Soldier, a cup of coffee not far from his hand as he fought to stave off sleep and the nightmares that still came along with it. He was getting better, though he had some way to go yet until a night of undisturbed sleep was more commonplace than the rare pleasure it remained.

But when Loki stepped out into the main room the space was as dark and silent as the bedroom had been. "Bucky?" Loki called, a frown settling across his brows, and he turned back to check the rest of the apartment.

There was no sign of him anywhere.


	2. Chapter 2

New York City was never quiet. In all the years Bucky had spent here — or what he could remember of them, at least — he couldn't think of a time it ever had been. Even during the brownouts throughout the city before he'd shipped off to England, there would still be cars on the roads, people on the streets. So it was no surprise that in the middle of the night, Midtown was still wide awake.

But maybe that would work out in their favour. In the lights and noise from nearby Times Square, nobody would notice the two figures creeping across the rooftops towards SHIELD's headquarters. Or so he hoped.

"What did Loki say when you told him about this?" Steve said beside him as they jumped over the low wall separating one building from the next.

"I didn't." They kept running, Bucky's eyes forward as he weaved between air conditioning units and water tanks, but once they'd reached the edge of the roof Steve was still looking at him in surprise. "If I'd have told him, he'd have insisted on coming," he explained. "Until we know he's recovered from what HYDRA did to him, I'm not letting him put himself in harm's way. He's on the bench for now."

Bucky peered down towards the next building. There was only around a one-story drop from their spot onto the roof. They could make that easy. He was the first to jump down, rolling when he hit the ground before quickly stepping out of the way for Steve to follow. His shield hit the concrete with a loud clang, though amidst the sirens and shouts drifting up to them, nobody else was likely to have heard it. But even so, Bucky's head shot around, waiting for someone to jump from the shadows and catch them.

They probably had that to look forward to once they reached SHIELD.

"That expression still means what I think it does, right?" Steve said while he got to his feet and fell into step at Bucky's side. "It doesn't have some strange new meaning I don't know about?"

Bucky paused, staring forward at nothing in particular as he frowned. "I don't think so."

He wouldn't be surprised if it did, though. Everything seemed to these days.

Steve looked to be relieved at that, nodding as they set off again. "He's not going to be happy when he finds out we left him behind."

Bucky had suspected as much himself. But if it had been the other way around, Loki would have done the same, so maybe he'd let Bucky off easy. He wouldn't hold his breath, though. He'd just have to find a way to make it up to Loki when he got home — if they made it out of this unscathed.

They reached the edge of the roof and came to a stop. SHIELD's headquarters was right there, some twenty feet in front of them — the only problem was the building between was a damn sight smaller than the others. They'd probably be able to make it down all right, but getting back up on the other side was another story.

"Can you jump that gap?" Bucky said as he and Steve studied it. SHIELD's building looked slightly lower than the apartment tower they stood atop, which should make crossing the gap easier, though if they missed, it wouldn't be pretty. But then, they had both survived worse.

Steve nodded again, full of the reckless overconfidence that always set Bucky's nerves on edge. He just hoped Steve wasn't overestimating himself on this one. "I've made bigger jumps than this," Steve said.

"Let's go, then."

With a quick glance over at Steve, Bucky backed up and took a running jump, sailing through the humid summer air until his feet connected with solid ground. He went down hard, cursing to himself as he lay panting for a moment. This had been so much easier the last time they'd had to go sneaking around inside SHIELD. And they hadn't even got to the hard part yet.

"Do you have any idea where this thing's going to be?" Steve said after he'd landed on the roof as well and they'd crouched out of sight, their eyes on the set of doors leading back down into the building. Bucky had half expected them to be surrounded by SHIELD agents by now, but it seemed no-one had noticed their presence just yet.

"Fury's office is probably a good place to start," he replied. "If it's not there, maybe Coulson will have left it in his."

"And if it's already in the lab being looked at?"

"Then we're screwed." He looked over at Steve again, well camouflaged in the darkness dressed all in black, dark paint smeared over his shield — as if that made it any less conspicuous — before gazing back towards the door. "Okay, so as soon as I get the door open, you burst in ready to take on anyone waiting for us on the other side."

"Bucky," Steve cut in, not listening. He was staring in the opposite direction, and Bucky followed his gaze to see a quinjet approaching. "Is that one of SHIELD's?"

Bucky grinned. Maybe it wouldn't be quite so difficult to get inside after all. "Yes it is."

They dropped down, flattening themselves against the concrete while the jet landed across the roof from their hiding place. Bucky peered around the vent to watch as best he could. He didn't have a great vantage point, only a tiny sliver of the back end of the jet visible while the cargo door opened, but he didn't dare poke his head out further for fear of being spotted. He watched as a handful of agents stepped out and made their way towards the doors while the jet took off again. Bucky didn't know where SHIELD kept the quinjets if not here, but now wasn't the time to question it. As long as it was far away from them when they made their move, he was happy.

"Ready?" he breathed, and from the corner of his eye he saw Steve nod. Bucky looked back towards the door, waiting as the first agent approached and leant forward to peer into the retinal scanner. "Now."

Steve leaped over the vent and charged while Bucky jumped to his feet, shooting out the security camera above the door before the agents were fully aware of what was happening. He couldn't even see it in the dim light — it was hard enough to see the thing in broad daylight, tiny as it was; it was purely by accident he'd ever even realised there was a camera there — but from the shatter of glass, he'd hit his target, and he raced after Steve. He'd thrust his shield into the doorway to keep it open and was taking on the evidently well-trained agents unarmed. It wasn't going too well for him.

Bucky barrelled straight into two of them, separating them from the others swarming Steve and praying he'd be able to keep them both occupied enough that neither of them could call for backup. He didn't give them time to reorient themselves once they'd hit the ground. One of them was beginning to straighten, reaching for his holster before Bucky stilled him with a swift kick to the temple. He hadn't even dropped his foot to the ground again before he was tackled by the other.

A shock of electricity radiated through his body and Bucky gritted his teeth, his eyes squeezed shut as he rode out the spasms gripping his muscles, waiting for a lull in the sensation. The moment it came he twisted from their grasp. With one hand he snatched the taser while the other held tight onto the agent's wrist, steering the pistol they'd grabbed away and snapping their forearm before they could aim for him. As soon as he released his grasp they crumpled into a heap on the ground with a grunt of pain, and Bucky hurled the taser towards the edge of the rooftop.

"God, I hate those things," he said.

He turned back to see Steve restrained by one of the last two agents still standing while the other landed a painful-looking punch to his gut. He'd have doubled over if not for the arm held tight around his neck, but he managed to kick out, sending the man who'd hit him flying clear across the rooftop.

Bucky reached for his gun again. He fired once, and the agent loosened his grip on Steve's throat to clutch at his thigh as he dropped to his knees. Steve's boot connected hard with the man's head, and he was down.

"Thanks," Steve said, rubbing at his neck while Bucky crossed back to him in a few quick strides.

"Are you hurt?"

"No."

"Good." He holstered his gun as he spoke and followed Steve towards the entrance to the building. "Where's Fury's office?"

"Two floors down; south-east corner."

Well at least it wasn't far from their location. He didn't like their chances if they'd have had to make it through much more of the building to reach it. And Coulson's office wasn't much farther — though there was the risk they'd get turned around having to navigate downwards — so if they were lucky, maybe they could get in and out without encountering anybody else.

"Do you think there'll be cameras in the halls?" Steve said as they stepped inside and he pulled the door closed softly behind them.

"Probably."

They'd just have to be quick enough not to be spotted. They made their way to the south stairwell in silence and hurried down the stairs, weapons in hand even though the chances of anybody finding them in here were slim. Bucky was just reaching for the door leading out onto Fury's floor when Steve spoke again.

"So what happens once we've found this drive?" he said. It was a fair question, though Bucky didn't have a good answer for it.

He paused mid-step and stared back at Steve. "I haven't thought that far ahead yet."

To his credit, Steve didn't look put off by that admission. God knows, Bucky had followed him on enough poorly thought-out plans it was about time he returned the favour. Bucky pulled the door open and Steve stepped out into the hall, and with a brief glance in each direction he motioned for Bucky to follow.

He led the way through the corridors while they moved as quickly and quietly as they could towards Fury's office. Bucky was ready at his six, eyes and ears trained for any signs of activity, waiting for every door they passed to fly open, for a strike team to meet them at every corner they reached. No doubt Steve was doing the same in front of him.

But the closest they came to encountering anybody was passing the occasional office with the lights still on and the sound of conversation coming from inside. They ducked past them easily enough, and before long Steve came to a halt, glancing over his shoulder at Bucky and nodding. They were getting close.

Bucky was just about to round the corner when he stopped short. Fury's voice was coming from somewhere nearby.

"Don't you ever go home, Hill?"

"I will when you will, sir," she replied, and Bucky sank down into a crouch, pressing himself against the wall and hardly daring to breathe as he watched the pair head towards Fury's office. "You sent Coulson back to the site?"

"I needed someone I could trust to supervise the rest of the clean-up. HYDRA's got their hands on some advanced stuff."

"Alien?"

"I'd say that's more than likely." He shot Hill a stern look. "I trust news of this has stayed quiet."

"Only authorised personnel are aware of anything relating to the discovery; fewer still know it was a HYDRA base," she said as Fury pushed open his office door and disappeared into the room. Hill stayed in the doorway staring after him. "Secretary Pierce wants an update first thing in the morning."

Even from their distance, Bucky could hear Fury sigh before Hill returned the way she'd come and the door quietly swung closed behind her. He looked back at Steve, crouching behind Bucky and still listening with a frown.

"Coulson's office," Bucky said, and they darted back to the stairwell to head down towards his office on the floor below. If they were lucky, Fury would be gone by the time they came back. It was pretty damn unlikely, but Bucky could hope, couldn't he? In any case, he'd figure out a plan for that scenario as they went.

Thankfully, the corridor outside Coulson's office was empty, and Bucky jogged towards the door before that changed. The light was off inside, and he pushed the door open just enough to slip into the room ahead of Steve. But Steve didn't have a chance to follow him.

"Captain Rogers," a voice called from further along the hall.

Damn it.

Bucky dropped to a crouch against the wall, hopefully quickly enough that he hadn't been seen through the narrow window in the office door, and twisted to peer through the window as Steve turned.

"Agent Hill." As he spoke, Steve discreetly slipped his shield through the doorway before pulling the door closed behind him.

Well, if he could keep Hill distracted, that might buy Bucky some time to search the office. He crept towards the desk in the centre of the modest room, his eyes still on the window as Hill appeared outside the door. He flattened himself against the wall, though luckily Steve turned, forcing Hill's eyes in the opposite direction.

"What are you doing skulking the halls," Bucky heard her say as he reached the desk. "At 4am."

Coulson's desk was as utilitarian as everything to do with SHIELD seemed to be, nothing but a computer and telephone sitting atop it, though there was a shallow drawer beneath the polished steel. It was locked when Bucky tried to pull it open. That had to be a good sign.

"Oh," Steve said, desperately trying to act nonchalant when Bucky looked up again, though with any luck Hill wouldn't pick up on that, "I just couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd come see if Agent Coulson was still here. He seems to know a lot about the period after I was frozen; I was hoping he could help me piece some things together."

"Any other night you would have found him," Hill replied. It sounded as if there was a smile in her voice — as much as she ever smiled. Bucky could only think of one or two occasions in the time they'd worked together that he'd caught any kind of amusement on her face.

"Just my luck, huh?"

Bucky wrenched the drawer open, before glancing towards the pair in the corridor to make sure they hadn't heard the noise. Steve's eyes darted up to the window every once in a while, but there was no change in Hill that Bucky could see. Of course, it was entirely possible that she'd known Bucky was there this whole time and was just playing along until he re-emerged, but he didn't want to give that possibility any more thought than he had to, and he forced his eyes back down. There wasn't much in the drawer, a couple of manila folders and a tablet underneath one of Coulson's guns, along with an old trinket box, and Bucky reached inside, feeling around the edges for some secret compartment. He didn't find one.

He straightened, peering around the room again. The walls were bare concrete, no joins he could see that might mark a hidden safe or room, and Bucky sighed. What the hell kind of spy didn't have any secret hideaways in their office?

They still had Fury's office to search, he supposed, if they could ever get close enough to slip inside, but his confidence that they'd find the flash drive was quickly diminishing. He picked up the little wooden box and gave it a shake, more out of curiosity than a genuine feeling he'd find anything important inside.

Something rattled against the wood. It sounded bigger than the paperclips or staples he'd have expected to find inside the box, and Bucky shot a quick glance back up at the door again before studying it more closely.

There was no clear opening he could see, and he scowled as he twisted and pushed at the notches carved into the wood without success. He'd never had the patience for puzzle boxes, even when he didn't have precious few seconds to open one before being caught. His grandfather had given him one for Christmas one year; Bucky was pretty sure the thing had ended up sitting forgotten on the bookcase once he'd given up on trying to open it. Maybe it was actually a pretty smart idea on Coulson's part, stashing his valuables in here. But not smart enough.

"Sorry, Phil," Bucky whispered. He ducked down behind the desk and smashed the box against the floor. The flash drive was inside.

Thank God for that.

He pocketed it and crept back to the door. Now this was the tricky part.

Steve and Hill were still talking in the hall, and Bucky waited, crouched behind the door with baited breath. The next time Steve made eye contact Bucky gave him a thumbs up, and Steve took a step back, placing a hand on Hill's shoulder blade and guiding her down the corridor as they disappeared out of sight. Bucky gave them a moment before picking up Steve's shield and slowly pulling open the door. They were heading towards the elevators when Bucky poked his head out, and Steve peered back over his shoulder before the doors opened for them.

'Go,' he mouthed, and Bucky slipped out of Coulson's office and made a dash in the other direction for the stairwell. His heart was in his chest until he'd reached the roof again. He wouldn't be truly out of the woods until he was back at Stark Tower — or, hell, until he was as far from SHIELD as possible — but getting out of the building was a victory in itself, and Bucky was going to savour the achievement. The agents they'd encountered earlier were still undiscovered, and still unconscious by the look of it, but Bucky didn't stick around long enough to check. He didn't dare hang about longer than necessary.

That meant Bucky would have to head back without Steve, but he could take care of himself inside SHIELD. They had no way to prove he'd been up to something anyway. And given the way most of the agents they encountered worshipped Steve like a god, they could probably catch him in the act and would still give him the benefit of the doubt. He'd be fine.

Bucky headed back across the rooftops until he was far enough away to safely make his way through the streets. He slipped easily through the crowds in Times Square, still busy enough even at this hour for him to pass by unnoticed, yet it wasn't long before he felt increasingly like someone was following him. It was probably just him being paranoid as usual, but he changed course regardless, turning onto 46th Street and quickening his steps until he heard someone call his name.

"Jesus, you scared the crap out of me," Bucky said while he turned around to face Steve jogging towards him. "They give you any trouble getting out?"

"No," Steve replied. He took his shield from Bucky as he spoke and they headed back towards Stark Tower together. "I heard the alarms just as I left."

"That was lucky." Steve would have never given over Bucky's name willingly if anyone at SHIELD had questioned him, though it wouldn't have taken much to piece things together. Especially if Steve had attempted to lie about it. But it probably wouldn't be long before they came for Bucky anyway. He glanced up at Stark Tower looming over them before turning back to Steve. "You coming up?"

"No, I think I'll head home. Too much excitement for one day." Even as he spoke, though, a wide grin stretched across his face. "Stay safe," he said, giving Bucky a departing clap on the arm.

"Yeah, you too." He watched Steve carry on down the block towards Grand Central until he disappeared out of sight, before finally turning to head inside. When he stepped back into his apartment, Loki was stood by the door, arms folded across his chest and one very unimpressed expression on his face.

"You went to SHIELD," he said.

Bucky nodded as he passed Loki, sliding out of his jacket and folding it over the back of one of the dining chairs. It wasn't as if Loki really needed Bucky's confirmation, though. He wouldn't have been standing there for God knows how long waiting for him to get back if he'd thought Bucky had popped out for groceries.

"And you decided to leave me out of it, why?"

"You would have slowed us down," he shrugged, and eyed Loki staring back at him with what looked dangerously close to a pout on his lips — which probably had less to do with Bucky risking his neck and very likely bringing the wrath of SHIELD down on them, and more to do with him not being included in any of it. Bucky had to fight a smile at the sight. Loki was centuries old, capable of things most people would never believe, and here he was sulking like a moody teenager. It was kind of adorable.

Loki rolled his eyes when he caught the look on Bucky's face. "Did you find it, at least?"

Bucky pulled the drive from his pocket and held it up for Loki to see. He didn't look half as relieved as Bucky had thought he would, though. Instead he just shook his head.

"You realise as soon as they know it's gone they'll come for you," he said as Bucky slid the drive out of sight again.

"I know." Hell, before he'd even left the apartment he'd known there were better ways to keep the information on Loki out of SHIELD's hands than simply stealing the thing, but he hadn't had time to come up with a smarter idea. And any plan he might have had for deleting the files and making sure no-one could recover them again afterwards would have needed Stark. It had been a few weeks since they'd spoken, but as far as Bucky knew, Stark was still clear across the country. He'd have been no help to them in this. "But did you really think they'd never use this against us the moment they needed to keep you in line?"

Loki's expression finally softened a little at that and he relented. "No," he said, however reluctantly.

But before Bucky could say anything else his phone buzzed at his side. "It's Coulson," he said once he'd rooted through the pockets of his jacket to retrieve it.

"Well that didn't take long."

Bucky had to agree there. He had hoped that with Coulson back at the HYDRA base they'd have at least a few hours to figure out their next move. He must have slipped out of the building just before Coulson returned.

" _Where is it, Barnes_?" Coulson said the moment Bucky answered the phone.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

" _Don't be coy_ ," he replied. " _There aren't that many people who'd want to break into my office. Look, I understand your concerns, but you have my word no-one at SHIELD is interested in using HYDRA's intel on Loki's physiology. Just bring the flash drive back and we can pretend this never happened. No harm, no foul. How does that sound_?"

Yeah, like Bucky was going to fall for that line. Even if Coulson would be prepared to look past it, there was no way Fury would. Bucky was useful to SHIELD, sure, but not enough to escape punishment. "You're too late; I already destroyed it."

" _That would be the smart move. Though do you not think we would have made copies already_?"

Bucky grinned. "Well if you had, you wouldn't be so worried about me having this copy, would you?"

Coulson went quiet at that, and Bucky's smile widened. Finally Coulson sighed before speaking again. " _This is SHIELD intel you've stolen_ ," he said, and unless Bucky was hearing things it sounded like there was genuine conflict in his voice. That didn't bode well for what he was about to say. " _If you don't return the drive, we'll have no choice but to send a team to retake it by force_."

"I'll look forward to it," Bucky said, and hung up before Coulson could respond.

He glanced back to Loki stood watching him intently. No doubt he'd been trying to piece together what he could of Bucky's conversation with Coulson. He still looked a little sour, but he'd get over it soon enough. Somehow Bucky doubted Loki would be able to avoid the next fight that found them even if he'd have wanted to.

"Are you with me on this?"

"Of course," Loki replied without hesitation.

Bucky crushed his phone in his hand and let the tiny shards of glass and metal drop to the floor. It wasn't like they'd be around much longer to worry about the mess. "Then pack a bag," he said. "We need to get moving."


	3. Chapter 3

The early morning light had been just breaking through the clouds when Bucky and Loki had slipped from Stark Tower. Luckily for them there'd been barely a soul out on the streets, SHIELD or otherwise, and even now the city was still in the process of waking up. Bucky was stood in the doorway of a deli still hours away from opening, his baseball cap pulled down over his forehead and metal hand hidden away in his pocket clutched protectively around the flash drive, and he squinted against the bright sunlight as he glanced back in the direction of the tower. SHIELD couldn't have been far behind them; they were almost certainly extending their search beyond Stark Tower by now.

He dropped his head as a pair of women rounded the corner and hurried past him, his eyes on them until they crossed the road and disappeared into a gym on the other side of the street. He wasn't expecting SHIELD to send agents undercover — not yet, anyway — but still he sized up anybody who approached, waiting for their eyes to land on him, searching for any sign of a concealed weapon. It would only get harder to spot anyone suspicious when the morning rush came, but with any luck by then he and Loki would be on their way beyond SHIELD's reach. Wherever they could hope to escape it.

Frowning at that thought, Bucky peered down the street again until finally he caught sight of Loki at the end of the block. "Did you get it?" he said as Loki strode back towards him.

"It wasn't easy." He pulled a cell phone from his pocket and handed it to Bucky before glancing around the quiet street. "I'd have thought there would be more people about."

"We're a little early for the commuters."

Bucky took the phone from Loki's hand, but as he was about to start typing in numbers he noticed Loki pulling out a wallet and leafing through it. He was opening his mouth to object when Loki cut him off.

"They didn't even notice I'd taken it," he said, as if that would ease Bucky's concerns.

"Should I be worried about how good you are at this?"

Loki didn't answer. Instead he held up a wad of bills with a self-satisfied expression as he tossed the wallet aside. "Breakfast? My treat."

Bucky rolled his eyes, trying desperately not to show his amusement at Loki's antics, and finally pressed the phone to his ear. After a few rings he heard a low groan on the other end of the line.

"Wake up, Stark," Bucky said.

He grumbled again in response. " _You know_ ," he said, voice hoarse and speech markedly slower than usual, " _calling in the middle of the night has never been socially acceptable, so you can't blame this on your 70-year time out. Do you have any idea what time it is_?"

"We need your help."

" _At_ —" He paused for a second, working out the time difference. "— _5:30 in the morning? What could you even be doing this early? So help me God, if you and Loki tried some weird sex thing that's gone horribly wrong..._ "

"I stole something from SHIELD," Bucky replied, cutting Stark off before he could keep talking. He had a tendency to just keep on going if you didn't. "I need you to take a look at it before they catch up with us."

That woke him up. " _What did you steal_?"

"A flash drive."

" _Okay, next question: why_?"

"That's kind of a long story." Too long to get into while they were still in Manhattan, still within striking distance of the SHIELD agents crawling all over Stark Tower, at any rate. He could fill Stark in once he and Loki had a plan for where they could go next. "Can you help?"

" _SHIELD is coming for you_?" Stark said.

"Yeah."

" _You'll need to get out of New York. Best bet is heading out here; gives me a chance to look at this drive, and you should be able to lie low at the house without any problems. But SHIELD will have the airports monitored by now_."

"Well it's not like I could just hop on a passenger jet without drawing attention to myself anyway," Bucky said, sucking on the inside of his cheek while he considered their options. He could probably pilot a quinjet in a pinch, though there was no way in hell he and Loki would be able to steal one. Even if there was a chance they could, he wouldn't want to get close enough to any SHIELD base to try. They'd get caught before they could even lay eyes on a jet. "We'd be on the road too long if we tried to drive out to you, and I'm guessing train stations will be almost as bad as the airports."

Bucky had been glancing back and forth still watching out for SHIELD's approach while he spoke, but Loki caught his eye then, looking over at him with a furrowed brow as he listened to Bucky's end of the conversation. Bucky pulled the phone back, half-listening in case Stark had anything to add, and met Loki's gaze. "What are you thinking?"

"I doubt I could do much to undermine airport security," he said, "though I should be able to get us through a train station, even if SHIELD has eyes in the area."

That would be some welcome good news if he could. It was worth a shot, at least, and since they didn't have any better ideas it would have to do. "Stark, you catch that?"

" _Yeah. I'll call Pepper; have her do what she can for you on your end_."

"Thank you, Tony," Bucky said. "We owe you."

" _Return the favour by letting me go back to sleep_."

"Sweet dreams," replied Bucky, ending the call and tossing the phone into a nearby trash can. Its rightful owner would soon realise it was gone, and Bucky didn't want to be hanging on to it when they did.

"Now what?" Loki said.

"Now we wait."

Luckily it wasn't too long before Pepper found them. They'd been sitting quietly munching on lukewarm breakfast burritos on the steps outside a hotel further down the block when Bucky had spotted a dark town car drawing closer. He'd straightened, his eyes flicking to Loki watching just as intently before returning to the car as it pulled up to the curb. Instinctively he'd reached for the pistol tucked into the back of his jeans, but before he could close his hand around it the rear door had swung open to reveal Pepper sitting inside, looking as put-together as she always did despite it barely being 6am.

She shot them a polite smile that couldn't fully mask the worry in her eyes and gestured for them to get in. "Quickly," she said, as Bucky tossed the rest of his food into the trash with a little too much enthusiasm and he and Loki hurried across the sidewalk to pile into the car. As soon as Pepper closed the door behind them they pulled back out into the steadily building traffic.

"Tony filled you in?"

"As much as he could, before SHIELD started turning the place upside down looking for the two of you. You've caused quite a commotion, I take it?"

"You could say that," Loki said, shooting a sideways glance at Bucky.

"Do I want to know what this is about?"

"It's probably best you don't," replied Bucky.

It stood to reason SHIELD would question Pepper properly before long — she'd been the only other person staying in the tower since Stark had headed back to the West Coast earlier in the week, which probably made her the closest person to the pair besides Steve. Bucky didn't believe for a second that she would tell them anything, but he didn't know how far SHIELD would go to catch them. The more Pepper knew, the more she could be at risk.

From the expression on Pepper's face at Bucky's words, she immediately understood, and without argument she pulled her phone from the pocket of her blazer and peered down at it. "There's a train leaving Penn Station for Chicago in forty minutes. From there you can change for California," she said, before tapping at the screen for a moment. "Your tickets are all paid for; you just need to pick them up when you get to the station."

"Thank you," Bucky said while she slid the phone away again and looked between him and Loki, her lips pursing into a concerned line.

"You know SHIELD will be able to access the station's security footage," she started.

Bucky glanced over at Loki. "We've got it covered."

Pepper nodded, the worry on her features slowly melting away again as she returned to the practicalities of their plan. "You run into any problems, call Tony," she said, while she began to leaf through the briefcase on the seat beside her until she'd pulled out a small set of keys and handed them to Bucky. "Here are the keys to the house. Since Tony's apparently incapable of opening the front door himself, you'll probably need them. Jarvis already has facial scans and voice samples of the two of you, so he shouldn't give you any trouble wandering through the grounds unannounced."

"Got it."

After another few minutes the car rolled to a stop, and Pepper craned her neck to peer out of the tinted windows. "Here we are," she said, before turning to look back at the pair, her expression stern again as a thought seemed to occur to her. "If you have any weapons on you, I suggest you turn them over."

Bucky frowned. "Why?"

"Do you really think you'll be able to take a gun on a train? I thought the intention was to slip by unnoticed."

"And what if we're tracked down by men with guns?" Loki said. He didn't bother to try and mask his scathing tone, but Pepper didn't look remotely fazed by it, staring back at Loki with an impassive expression.

"Then you'll need to get inventive."

Loki shot Bucky a disbelieving look, though the moment Bucky began pulling his weapons from their hiding places he sighed and did the same. There was a fair sized pile of pistols and knives on the seat beside Pepper when they were done. She looked back up at Bucky and arched one perfectly manicured eyebrow, and he shrugged in response.

"Can't be too careful," he said, before his gaze flicked to Loki. "Ready?"

Loki nodded, and his eyes seemed to almost glow in the muted light inside the car as his face morphed into someone else's amidst the familiar light his magic cast. Bucky didn't need to look down to know the glamour had disguised him as well, but he did so anyway, his jeans and flannel shirt replaced with a smart business suit and his cybernetic arm long gone. It was a sight he just couldn't get used to, no matter how much he might have wanted to picture himself without it, though he didn't let himself think about that too much. They had more pressing matters to be concerned with.

He looked over at Pepper again to see her staring back at the pair, her raised eyebrows the only dent in her composure. "Thanks again, Pepper," Bucky said, reaching for the door handle while Loki grabbed their bag.

"Good luck. And be careful," she added emphatically as Bucky and Loki climbed out of the car. It pulled away again as soon as they were on the sidewalk, and Bucky peered in either direction, making sure there was no black van lurking nearby filled with SHIELD agents waiting for them, before he and Loki headed into the station.

"Are you sure this will work?" he said, his eyes on the cameras overhead while they weaved through the crowds. It was still quieter than usual, quieter than it would be an hour from now, but it was busy enough with early commuters that no-one should look too closely at them. Bucky was banking on that. SHIELD was almost certainly here already.

"I've no doubt it will be enough to fool the surveillance cameras," Loki replied. "We'll only face problems if we have to pass through any metal detectors. I can disguise your arm, but I can't erase it completely."

Bucky glanced back at him. If there was any uncertainty in Loki's voice or his features, it was hard to tell. Loki could be hard to read at the best of times; Bucky didn't stand a chance of guessing what was going on under the surface when it wasn't the Loki he'd grown so familiar with that he was looking at.

A pair of dark eyes met his own. "Relax," Loki said.

"Yeah, like that's gonna happen."

Loki shot him a warm smile in response and turned to lead the way towards the ticket booths, and with another furtive glance up at the cameras Bucky headed after him. Their tickets were there waiting for them, as promised. Bucky had never really expected otherwise, but still it was a relief to have them in his hand, to know that was one more hurdle out of the way.

Whatever hint of relief he felt though, it was quickly replaced with another gut punch of anxiety when they stepped away from the ticket booth and Bucky caught sight of a pair not far from his and Loki's position, dressed all in black, backs straight and eyes scanning the room. As they moved close enough for Bucky to get a decent look at their faces he recognised the man; he'd been one of the first SHIELD agents on the scene when Jotunheim had attacked the year before, the only member of his team to survive their encounter with the frost giants. Any hope Bucky had that he was mistaken disappeared when the man turned his head and Bucky spotted the dark scar along his cheekbone, his souvenir from the battle.

"They can't see us," Loki said, his voice low and close to Bucky's ear, once he'd realised why Bucky had abruptly frozen in place.

"I know. But is that stopping you from worrying?"

Loki glanced back towards the agents as they turned to head up the escalators. "No," he replied, eyes still on them until they disappeared out of view. "Where do you think they're going?"

"Surveillance office, probably. Come on." Bucky gave a gentle tug at Loki's sleeve and they made their way in the opposite direction towards their platform.

There was only the occasional handful of people already on the platform when Bucky and Loki reached it, mostly groups heading out of the city on vacation, judging by the suitcases many were wheeling along behind them. Bucky didn't blame them. The air was sticky and warm already, and sure to only get worse as the day wore on. Maybe he'd been gone too long, grown too used to the cold, but summers in New York seemed so much worse than he remembered. The heat only grew more stifling as more people began to filter onto the platform, though Bucky barely noticed it. His attention was firmly on the staircase leading down to the platform, waiting for SHIELD to finally spot them among the crowd and come charging down to arrest them before they could escape the city.

"The train's here," Loki said, and Bucky blinked, tearing his eyes away from the stairs and following Loki's gaze back towards the train rolling into the station. Once it came to a stop before them they quickly climbed aboard and took their seats, Bucky's eyes glued to the window, oblivious to the people brushing past as they made their way down the carriage.

If SHIELD caught up with them now there would be no escaping. The passengers blocking the gangways while they loaded their luggage into the overhead compartments might slow the agents down, but that wouldn't be much help to Loki and Bucky. They'd still be trapped in here, no space to run, let alone try and fight back. He curled his hand tighter around the flash drive still hidden in his pocket as he waited for the doors to slide closed. After what felt like an eternity they finally did, and Bucky breathed deeply again only once the train began to pull away from the station.

Now all they had to do was try and make it to Stark's in one piece.


	4. Chapter 4

It was two days before they heard from anyone in New York again. So far things had been mostly uneventful. Bucky had spent longer than he was happy to admit trying to get the damn prepaid cell phone he'd bought to work, and Loki had almost snapped when an overly chatty man had decided to make himself at home at their table for a few hours until he'd finally moved on to harass someone else, luckily before Loki could launch himself across the table and throttle him, but otherwise it had been a surprisingly peaceful couple of days. It would have been quite a pleasant trip were it not for the constant fear and paranoia hanging over Bucky's head.

"Any word on whether SHIELD can recover HYDRA's files?" he said. He kept his voice low, the phone pressed close to his ear, curling in on himself as if it would make him invisible.

" _Not that I've heard_ ," Steve replied, his voice crackling over the line and almost too quiet to hear thanks to the crummy signal, " _but then I'm not their most trusted ally right now_."

"Have they come down on you yet?"

" _Fury's been leaning on me pretty hard. But I think he's more interested in finding you two than the part I played in stealing that drive_."

"Benefits of being Captain America, I guess." Bucky glanced around the carriage as he spoke. No-one seemed to be paying him any attention. "SHIELD won't make an enemy of their golden boy if they can help it."

" _Let's hope so. Where are you now_?"

"Still on the road. We should be with Stark by tomorrow."

" _You need me to head out there to you_?"

"You're probably better off staying put for now," Bucky said. SHIELD was all too aware that Steve was on Bucky's side in this. They might not want to move against Steve — not publicly, at any rate — but it was a fair bet they were monitoring him closely now. "Something comes up, we'll let you know, but until then keep your head down. I mean that, Steve," he added sternly. Even if it wouldn't do a jot of good.

" _I got it. You guys watch your backs_."

"Always do. I'll call you again when we get there."

"Any news?" Loki said once Bucky had tucked the phone back into his pocket, careful to keep his metal hand out of sight. Loki probably could have kept them disguised for the whole trip, but if there was a chance of SHIELD catching up with them, Bucky didn't want to risk facing them without Loki at full strength.

He shook his head in response, while he reached to pull Loki's arm forward across the table between them, pushing back his sleeve and peeling up the thick gauze covering his forearm. His wound was healing, finally, blisters at last scabbing over and the blue patches of skin fading enough to look more like bruises now than Loki's Jotunn form bleeding through, but it was still taking a damn sight longer than Bucky would like. Loki would be able to fight if it came to it, though; Bucky could worry about the rest once they'd made it to Stark's.

"Does it still hurt?"

"Not really," Loki replied absently. He was too busy staring back out through the window to pay much attention to Bucky inspecting his arm.

Over the past two days they'd sped through one bustling metropolis after another and passed wide stretches of farmland and open countryside, lakes and mountain ranges rushing past in the distance. Loki's eyes had stayed glued to the window for most of that time. It was his usual position — whether they were in Stark Tower or some grimy safe house in Europe, Bucky would be sure to find Loki stood studying the world around him from a distance — though he gazed out more intently now than Bucky had ever seen before, almost mesmerised by the rapidly changing landscape.

Bucky sat back in his seat, his fingers tracing over the bones of Loki's hand as he watched him with a smile. "World away from home, huh?"

Loki hummed, though whether he was thinking of New York or Jotunheim, Bucky couldn't be sure. Both seemed appropriate. Though minus the nearby snaking river and scrub brush clinging to the rocks, and the sunlight beating down over it all, the vast cliffs that had been towering above them since the train had begun weaving through the canyons a few hours earlier were maybe not so far removed from Jotunheim's landscape, after all. But of the two, one was definitely more welcoming than the other.

Bucky followed Loki's gaze to take in their surroundings as well. "You know, I've never actually seen half this country," he said, and Loki eyed him in interest. "Been dragged all across the ass-end of Europe, travelled to other freaking planets; still haven't explored my own back yard."

Loki smiled back at him and they sat in comfortable silence for a moment, Bucky's gaze drifting to the landscape rushing past the window again as he half-listened to the snatches of conversation filling the carriage around them.

"Are you serious about abandoning this life one day?" Loki said suddenly. When Bucky met his eyes Loki was watching him with a curious look that Bucky hadn't seen on his face for some time, like Bucky was a puzzle for him to piece together. Bucky had never really considered himself mysterious enough to warrant the scrutiny, but apparently Loki still thought differently.

"And not have to live looking over my shoulder all the time? You bet," he replied. Christ knows it had been long enough since Bucky had last been able to.

Loki shot him a dry smile. "Now what might that be like, I wonder?"

"Oh, you'd be bored out of your mind," Bucky said as he grinned himself. "But I don't know, I just wish we could live like normal people once in a while. Go to the movies. Go dancing. I've never seen you dance." He frowned. "Do you even have music on Jotunheim?"

"We do. Nothing you'd likely recognise as such, though," replied Loki. He quirked an eyebrow in amusement. "And rather more difficult to dance to."

Bucky laughed to himself at the thought, before a long yawn burst up from his chest. He dropped his head back against the soft fabric of his seat and didn't bother opening his eyes again until Loki spoke.

"I suppose there's little point in asking if you got any rest last night," he said. There was a rare softness in his eyes as he looked up at Bucky.

Bucky shrugged. He'd tried, on and off, but it seemed fitful sleep was as much as he could manage at the moment. It wasn't much of a surprise, given the stress of the last few days, though he had a feeling the nightmares would have come back regardless. Just when he'd think he was getting better he'd suffer a stretch of too-vivid dreams that had him waking sweaty and panicked damn near every time he managed to drift off. But if a few nightmare-free weeks at a time was the best he could hope for, he'd take it.

"HYDRA?"

"The Eastern Front," he replied.

"Well, that makes for a nice change of scenery, I imagine."

"Yeah," Bucky said with a tiny smile that was more for Loki's benefit than his own, as he stared down at the table, focusing on the tiny crack in the varnish that had begun to splinter out towards the centre of it. He wasn't sure which was preferable, really. Violence was violence; whether it was Bucky's friends getting mowed down or innocent people dying at his own hands, Bucky would still wake up wanting to vomit every time.

Though it wasn't like anything else he ever dreamt about was much better.

He must have been quiet for too long. When he looked up Loki was studying Bucky's face intently again, a light frown on his own. "There's more to it," he said; a question or statement, it didn't really matter either way.

"I don't know, I had this weird dream, I guess." His brows knitted together as he tried to recall the details. "Something about a car accident? There was a car, at least; I don't remember the rest. The more I try to think of it, the more it slips away."

"Were you ever in a car accident?"

"I don't think so." He'd probably never know for sure, though. They were still digging through HYDRA's files when they could spare the time, finding more and more uncomfortable truths from Bucky's history as the Winter Soldier, but unless any accident he might have been in had been bad enough to cause some major damage to the arm, he doubted HYDRA would have bothered to report it. As long as it didn't affect his efficiency, his wellbeing had never been particularly high on HYDRA's list of concerns.

"Then perhaps it was simply a dream," Loki said, "nothing more."

"Yeah, probably. Suppose I'm just not used to it."

He should have figured the dreams his brain would come up with on its own would be just as grim as the memories he relived all too often, though. But then maybe that was what he deserved.

"Try and sleep, Bucky," Loki said, his voice pulling Bucky from his thoughts. "I'll wake you if you seem in distress."

Bucky glanced towards the other passengers sat around them while he shifted to make himself comfortable. "Just don't let me start screaming in a train car full of people."

A wicked grin flitted across Loki's face at that. "But how else am I supposed to amuse myself?" he replied, with the same devilish kind of faux-innocence he always did so well.

Bucky kicked him playfully under the table before settling in to try and get some rest. The gentle rocking of the train was quite soothing, he had to admit, and given how easily his eyes had slipped closed his body was in desperate need of a good sleep. But even so, that nagging worry at the back of his mind kept him from giving in to it.

After a few minutes he cracked an eye open to watch Loki. He was gazing back out of the window with barely constrained awe, and a small smile spread across Bucky's face at the sight. Catching him in moments like this, it took almost all of Bucky's self-restraint to not lean over the table and plant one on him.

"You aren't sleeping," Loki said, without bothering to tear his eyes from the view.

"I'm trying; give me a break."

At least it was quiet, only the occasional sounds of soft conversation carrying from further down the carriage to his and Loki's spot. He'd managed to sleep in worse conditions during the war. Bucky closed his eyes again, letting his thoughts clear as much as they were ever able to, and eventually the world around him seemed to drop away.

When he woke again it was to a bustle of activity, nearby passengers gathering up the things strewn across their tables and sliding jackets back on as Bucky looked around through bleary eyes. The train was approaching a quiet station, in what looked like the middle of nowhere, but it was evidently a busy enough place that their carriage almost emptied once they'd come to a stop.

"How long was I asleep?" Bucky said as he watched people spill out onto the small platform.

"A few hours."

Bucky yawned and rubbed at his eyes. It wasn't like getting a full night's sleep, not even close, but an hour or two would do in a pinch. And it wasn't like Bucky could really hope for much better at the moment.

A few people gradually came filtering in to the carriage and took their seats as the train pulled away from the station, and Bucky eyed them while they passed his and Loki's table. He smiled to himself when a woman came jostling past with two overexcited boys in tow, trying her best to keep their animated exchange from disturbing the other passengers. A lifetime ago that had been him and Steve giving their poor mothers the run-around whenever the two of them were together. He was amazed they'd ever coped.

He dropped his head back against his seat to lazily watch the world slip by, the desert reclaiming what little hints of civilisation Bucky could see while they picked up speed again. But as relaxed and content as Bucky might have felt in that moment, it wasn't long before his sense of unease began to return.

People had been filtering in and out of their carriage while the train headed further and further into the desert. That in itself was nothing out of the ordinary; it had been happening constantly over the last two days as people made their way back and forth to the toilets and dining car throughout the day, but when Bucky looked around at the other passengers he didn't recognise a single one of them. Even the woman and her sons were gone, he realised as he finally noticed the eerie quiet in the room. There were no boisterous children commenting loudly on what they could see from their window, no murmurs of conversation, no tinny music spilling from headphones. It was unsettling, to say the least.

"Loki," he said quietly, "something seem off to you?"

He looked around himself and frowned, immediately picking up on it too. "It could be nothing." But from the way his brows remained drawn down, lips pursed and his eyes suspicious as they flicked over the other passengers, he didn't believe it.

"Maybe," Bucky replied, his gaze flitting back through the carriage as well. Everybody was sat alone, some with a book in front of them and others staring straight ahead, but they were united in their silence. It was almost as if they were waiting for something. "I still don't like it."

"Neither do I."

As Bucky watched someone else stepped in through the doors at the far end of the carriage. He couldn't see them well from his position, just barely catching sight of the top of their head over the seats, but they seemed to be making eye contact with someone or something behind Loki and Bucky's spot, their head nodding a little before they turned back to the doors and a faint hissing noise echoed through the carriage.

"What was that?" Loki said.

"Grab the bag."

Bucky pushed himself out into the gangway, ready to hastily duck into the next carriage and slip as far from these guys as he and Loki could get. He stopped short when he turned to find himself face to face with a man in a conductor's uniform stood between them and the closed doors.

"Return to your seats please, gentlemen," he said.

"Why?"

"Please," he said again, the exact kind of non-answer Bucky would have rolled his eyes at if he wasn't more focused on the man's hand slowly reaching for something at his back. The few people sat behind him began to slide from their seats as well, more obstacles to keep Bucky and Loki from getting through those doors. The man's hand reappeared, and the moment Bucky caught sight of a taser clutched in it he threw the first punch, sending him staggering backwards into the others as they charged for Bucky.

He managed a quick glance over his shoulder at Loki before they could reach him. He had his back to Bucky and was squaring off against the other supposed passengers, who were crowding them from the opposite direction. So they'd definitely had cause to be suspicious, then. But on the bright side, at least Bucky wasn't completely paranoid.

"How many?" Bucky called while his foot connected with the first kneecap that came within reach, his fist following once the agent had dropped to his knees.

"Six?" Loki replied, his voice strained with activity and almost lost among the various grunts and shouts of pain as he and Bucky did their best to fight back the swarm. "Seven?"

"Same here."

He should probably be flattered that SHIELD took them seriously enough that they would send this many to capture the pair of them, but right now he'd much rather have SHIELD underestimate them. They'd have a better chance at coming out of this on top that way. But at least crammed into the narrow gangway it would be harder for their prospective captors to surround him and Loki; that might give them the edge they'd need.

Another taser came speeding towards Bucky crackling with electricity, but before it could make contact with his skin he dropped back into the seats behind him, springing to his feet again in time to grab the agent by her arm with one hand as his other connected with the back of her head to slam it hard into the table in front of them. By the time she'd crumpled to the ground unconscious, the man whose nose Bucky had apparently broken had straightened and was barrelling towards him, while another clambered over the seats to no doubt try and come at Bucky from the side.

But that one would have to wait for now. Bucky snatched up the taser that had clattered to the ground, pressing it to the other man's neck as he tackled Bucky and just managing to manoeuvre out of the way as the guy tumbled past him. He probably could have shrugged it off, righting himself and turning back to come at Bucky from the other direction, had he not caught his foot on the duffel Loki had dropped.

With a heavy crash the guy hit the ground at Loki's feet, and as a pair of arms wrapped tight around Bucky's chest he caught sight of Loki, midway through shoving one agent into the crowd of others to knock them back, swinging his foot at the man's head like he was kicking a soccer ball. His head snapped back violently from the impact and he was out like a light, while Loki dived into the fray behind him. He didn't seem to be having much trouble with the agents facing him — Bucky was almost sure he even caught a wide grin on Loki's face while he fought them back. It was better than the alternative, though. And if Loki could handle himself Bucky could focus on his own attackers without distraction.

The arms around his chest squeezed tighter until it was an effort to suck air into his lungs, and with a grunt Bucky threw his head back. He connected with something — and damn hard too, his vision blurring from the pain splintering through his skull — using the momentum to kick back the other two trying to crowd him from the front, and as the agent's grip loosened Bucky let him tumble back onto the seats behind.

Gulping down a deep breath, he blinked away the pain in his head as quickly as he could. He'd only have a split second to recover before the others were on him again.

Luckily the first was distracted easily enough when Bucky snapped her arm. She clutched it against her chest with nothing more than a tiny whimper slipping through her gritted teeth as she sank to the ground, and Bucky quickly pressed the taser to her shoulder before she could shake off the pain and come at Bucky again.

"Gun," Loki called from the other end of the carriage, and Bucky spun just as the man he'd thrown back into the seats sat up and aimed his pistol. They'd obviously passed the point of trying to bring Loki and Bucky in without doing them any serious damage by now. It was understandable, given how many of the others the two of them had already taken down.

Bucky jumped, gripping onto the baggage compartments overhead for leverage as he kicked out. His foot connected with the agent's jaw and he heard something snap before the man slumped back between the seats, and Bucky dropped to the ground again just in time to feel a bullet graze his side. The next went sailing through the window, deep cracks splintering across the glass from the tiny hole it left, when Bucky ducked into a crouch, whirling around as he did so to try and spot the one doing the shooting.

Loki had found them first. He plunged a dagger into the man's neck with a little too much relish, and tossed the knife to Bucky as another materialised in his hand.

"Thanks," Bucky said.

It was only a second before he ended up needing to use it. The last agent standing between them and the doors to their right leapt over the bodies littering the aisle to swing his foot towards Bucky's head, and immediately Bucky flipped the knife to his right hand to sink it deep into the man's calf, yanking it down towards his ankle as the man's cry and the stench of fresh blood filled the air.

Bucky was on his feet again before the man could regain his balance. He grabbed him by the fabric of his shirt and swung him towards the window, his front half crashing through the broken glass.

There was one agent left when Bucky quickly glanced around the carriage, pinning Loki back against one of the tables with a billy club pressed to his throat. Bucky hurled the bloody knife in his hand into their side, and they staggered back enough for Loki to snatch the billy club and knock them out with it.

The silence that spread through the room once they'd hit the ground, broken only by Bucky and Loki's ragged gasps, was downright blissful. Bucky collapsed against the side of a seat as he caught his breath, and Loki straightened, wiping away the blood trickling from his lip with the back of his hand before looking up towards Bucky.

"How did they find us?"

Bucky shook his head, hands on his hips as his gaze passed over the bodies in the carriage. The question was front and centre in his own mind as well. If SHIELD had managed to spot them at the station surely they'd have been able to track down the train Bucky and Loki were on before now — unless they'd found some other way to locate them.

God, Bucky didn't know.

"Do you think SHIELD got to Pepper?"

"No," Bucky replied, though he wasn't quite as confident as he'd have liked to be. He looked over at Loki crossing the carriage to join him; for reassurance, maybe, he wasn't sure. It wasn't like Loki would have any more answers than Bucky did at this point. "No, she would've called to warn us if she'd had to tell them anything."

But however SHIELD had managed to find them, he and Loki could worry about that later.

He surveyed the carnage surrounding them again. "I think this is our cue to skedaddle."

Loki nodded and spun on his heel to head back to the carriage door, without mind to the limbs he was kicking out of the way or just outright walking over. They didn't deserve the care, really — even if they had only been doing their job, they had still been trying to attack him and Loki; it was hard not to take that personally — but Bucky picked his way quickly and carefully towards the other set of doors.

"It won't open," Loki called. "It's as if the metal had been fused shut."

"This one too," said Bucky as he tried to wrench the doors open again without success. Whatever the agents had done to them, they weren't going to budge any time soon. He slapped his hand to the metal in frustration. "Damn it."

He really didn't want to be stuck in here when their company began to wake up. He didn't want to be on the train at all. If SHIELD had sent these guys, they had to know where Bucky and Loki were. There were probably more on the way already. And even if there wasn't, the people nearby must have heard the commotion from their carriage; someone would come and investigate just what the hell was going on in here any minute.

"How far to the next stop?" Loki said. He'd given up trying to prise open the doors at his end and returned to meet Bucky in the middle.

"Too far." He huffed, biting on the inside of his cheek, nails digging into his palm as he looked around. One member of the bloodied heap draped between the seats seemed to stir a little, though as Bucky's eyes flicked to them they didn't move again, apparently only jolted out of position by the train's movements. Still, he and Loki wouldn't have long to come up with another plan before they really did start to wake up. "SHIELD will probably be crawling all over the station anyway."

"Well, there is another way out."

Bucky looked up to study Loki's face at that. He was gazing off to Bucky's side, and Bucky followed his eyes to the broken window.

"Oh, you've got to be kidding."

Loki shrugged in response. "I'm open to suggestions, if you have a better idea."

Boy, did Bucky wish he had. He looked back at the window and sighed.

"Damn it," he said again through gritted teeth.

He stepped forward reluctantly and yanked the body back from where it was still hanging half through the window, breaking away the rest of the glass with his metal arm while Loki retrieved their bag and slung it over his shoulder. Luckily they'd only bothered to shove a few changes of clothes in it, though Bucky was more concerned about breaking bones than anything they'd packed. He made sure the flash drive was safe and secure in his pocket before climbing up to perch on the window frame, the last shards of glass crunching beneath his boots as he crouched.

The wind roaring along the side of the train was almost enough to topple him, but he tightened his grip on the top of the window while he peered down through his hair whipping into his eyes at the ground. It mostly looked like brush and untamed shrubs speeding past beneath them; nothing that could cause them too much damage, thankfully. Bucky was probably still going to regret this, though.

With a glance back at Loki stood on the seats behind him ready to follow, Bucky took a deep, steadying breath and pushed himself out into the wind.

He hit the ground hard enough to knock the air from his lungs, sliding down the steep ditch leading away from the tracks until he managed to grasp tightly enough at the clumps of long grass surrounding him to slow his fall, and at the sound of another thud from somewhere off to his right he glanced over to see Loki doing the same. He didn't land any better than Bucky had — though Bucky wasn't sure there really was a painless way to hurl yourself out of a speeding vehicle. They both stayed in place, pressed against the ground to keep themselves hidden, until the train had gone screeching past.

"You know what I said about settling down, getting away from all of this?" Bucky said while he and Loki carefully climbed to their feet again. He slipped a hand back into his pocket to check the drive was still in one piece, the other clutching at his ribs as a sharp pain tore through them when he tried to catch his breath. They didn't feel broken, but they were bound to be sore for a while.

"Yes?"

"Forget it. Why would we possibly want a normal life when we could be risking our asses pulling stunts like this?" He brushed the dirt from his pants too roughly, scowling as he did so while Loki picked his way through the brush to join him. "I mean, who wouldn't want this life?"

Loki grinned in response and a huff of laughter bubbled up from Bucky's chest despite himself, chipping away at his frustration until he could smile back at Loki. He shook his head with a sigh.

"So," Loki said, glancing around at the whole lot of nothing surrounding them, "do you have any idea which way to head?"

Bucky squinted as he gazed towards the setting sun. From the shapes silhouetted against the bright wash of pinks and orange it looked like there could be a town not too far off. "Follow the tracks. Hopefully they'll lead us someplace busy enough we can find a car."

It didn't take them long. In the first quiet street they came to on the outskirts of the town they found a handful of cars parked at the side of the road, and after scanning the street to make sure no-one was around Bucky yanked open the door to the most unremarkable of them.

"Keep watch," he said to Loki as he climbed into the driver's seat and swiftly checked the usual hiding places in case the owner had left their keys inside. It would make this a hell of a lot easier if they had. But unless they had an incredible spot for them, the keys weren't in the car, and Bucky cursed to himself while he reached under the dashboard to try hotwiring it.

It had been a lifetime since he'd last had to do this. He just hoped he could get it done quick.

"Hey!"

Bucky's head snapped up at the sound and he spotted a man racing towards them from the end of the street. But before he could reach them Loki grabbed him, the guy's head slamming down into the hood of the car with a heavy clang almost too fast for Bucky to register the movement, and Loki took a smooth step out of the way as the guy slumped to the ground.

"Please tell me he isn't dead," Bucky said once Loki had climbed into the seat beside him a moment later.

"He isn't dead," Loki replied obediently. "Though I doubt he'll be waking up for some time. Here," he added, a set of keys dangling from his hand and a satisfied expression on his face when Bucky looked back at him.

Bucky snatched them up and they quickly pulled away.

They drove through the night, speeding down deserted highways as fast as Bucky dared without attracting any undue attention. At least now they hopefully had a good chance of avoiding SHIELD, though Bucky's eyes still flicked almost obsessively to the rearview mirror in search of someone following them as he drove, and the tension gripping his body didn't ease until they had wound their way through the sunny hillsides of Malibu and finally reached the safety of Stark's mansion.


	5. Chapter 5

"Lot of effort to go to for one little flash drive."

They were in Stark's workshop, barely ten minutes after Bucky and Loki had arrived at the house and let themselves inside, Stark inspecting the drive Bucky had handed him like he'd never seen one before. He tapped the SHIELD emblem embossed in the metal with his thumb, and quickly leant back out of the line of fire. When nothing happened he frowned and brought the drive close to his face again to keep studying it.

Bucky rolled his eyes. "Yeah, if it was the drive itself I cared about, it would be," he said, resting his weight against the table where Stark was sat, while Loki wandered past to explore the rest of the workshop. "Can you help or not?"

"What exactly are you looking to find out?"

"If anyone can access those files from somewhere else, another HYDRA base, maybe; if someone's gone snooping already; if there's a way we can delete the files that SHIELD won't be able to recover them again."

Stark nodded. "I'll look into it when I have time. It should be easy enough, with Jarvis' help; trace the files back to their origin point and go from there..."

But that wasn't the part Bucky had latched on to. "When you have time?" he repeated dubiously. They hadn't come all this way just to wait for Stark to get his ass in gear.

"You think I sit around waiting for you two to need my help? I'm a busy man, you know. People just can't get enough of me."

Bucky sucked in a long, slow breath to keep himself calm while Stark rambled on. He was too tired, too strung out by the stress of the last few days, to deal with him this early. But he held his tongue, and Stark continued.

"I have a meeting with the lovely Lieutenant Colonel Rhodes the day after tomorrow; got some new toys to show off. The military likes to keep a man waiting, though, so I'll have some time before I hear back about putting any of them into development. Grouchy Smurf," he called suddenly, pointing back towards Loki without taking his eyes off of the flash drive in his hand, and Bucky glanced up to see Loki peering intently at the torso of an Iron Man suit that was hanging from the ceiling, "you touch that suit again we're going to have a problem."

Loki pulled a face at Tony's back, his eyes slowly returning to the suit as he pressed a deliberate finger to the metal before crossing the room to join them at Stark's worktable. Bucky bit the inside of his lip to keep it from twitching into a smile, and looked back down at Stark.

He set the flash drive aside to sit among the tools and scraps of metal cluttering the table. "Give me a few days; I'll get to it," he said, sitting back in his chair as he eyed Bucky again. "Now, do you want the bad news or the slightly better news?"

And with those few little words, the anxiety that had barely left Bucky came rushing back. His stomach knotted, voice weak when he spoke. "There's bad news?"

"SHIELD's gotten wise," Stark replied. "Fury started calling last night — and apparently you're not the only one who likes ringing people in the middle of the night, which might make you feel better. I swear, I'm having Jarvis start diverting calls after midnight from now on—"

"Back to the point, Stark," Bucky cut in.

"He thinks you're here. Or on your way. I promised I'd let him know when I heard anything from you, but since he's the distrustful sort it'll only be a matter of time before he sends a team to search the place."

Bucky looked between Stark and Loki helplessly. "How could SHIELD possibly know this is where we've been heading?"

"I imagine once they'd found us yesterday evening it would have been no great stretch to guess, knowing we have a friend on the West Coast," Loki offered, without any particular concern in his tone, before his eyes landed on a device Bucky didn't recognise at the other end of the table and he stepped closer to investigate.

"And if they'd managed to follow you two so far across the country, they could probably track you the rest of the way here," added Stark.

Bucky pinched the bridge of his nose and cursed under his breath. He hadn't considered SHIELD putting two and two together and working out where he and Loki had been going. He'd been too preoccupied wondering how SHIELD could have found them on the train in the first place to even think about it. He should have known. But they were dealing with forces so much bigger than the two of them; it was almost impossible to predict just what tricks SHIELD might use to bring them in again.

"Jarvis has been throwing out interference in case SHIELD already has eyes on the house," Stark went on. "It should be enough to tamper with any surveillance, but you'll still be better off heading somewhere safe before anyone drops by in person."

"Great," Bucky said, too weary to inject his tone with any real sarcasm. "So what's the better news?"

Stark rolled his chair over to the cabinets lining the nearest wall, returning a moment later to slap a heavy manila folder in front of Bucky. "I found you this."

"What is it?"

"Probably the crappiest gift you're going to get for a while."

Bucky pulled the folder towards himself. He flicked it open and slid out the top page of the thick stack of papers inside to take a look. "More HYDRA assassinations?" he said as he glanced over to Stark again. Even Loki's attention returned to the pair at Bucky's words. "I thought you'd found the last of it."

"The last that contained any direct mention or hints of the Winter Soldier's involvement, yeah. I had Jarvis widen the search parameters. This is bottom of the barrel stuff. Worse, even. I'm not sure there's any barrel left to keep scraping at. Pretty much any politician or diplomat, anyone even a little important, with a vaguely suspicious death is in there," Stark said, tapping the top of the folder to punctuate his point.

"They might not be Winter Soldier missions, might not even be HYDRA — I haven't had a look through it all yet to see if any of it is actually relevant — but maybe something'll ring a bell." He looked back up at Bucky with a flippant smile. "Who knows, maybe you were the second shooter on the grassy knoll."

Bucky frowned. "The what?"

"Never mind," he replied with a sigh. He tended to do that a lot, when Bucky and Loki had nothing but blank stares in response to half of what came out of Stark's mouth.

But Bucky could hardly help it. He'd been working to catch up on all the things he'd missed, though chasing down HYDRA and trying to shine a light on his own murky past didn't leave him with a lot of time to do so, and between the seventy years of world history he'd mostly slept through, and the countless films and books and celebrities everyone around him seemed to reference constantly, there was a lot for him to sift through before he'd be anywhere close to being up to speed. And as for Loki, well, he'd never really cared enough to bother. He'd taken a liking to the food, but otherwise the highest praise he had to give life on Earth was that it was better than Jotunheim; he wasn't about to waste his time studying its history just to understand what a bunch of people he tolerated at best were talking about.

Bucky slipped the sheet of paper back into place and tucked the folder under his arm. He'd feel much more comfortable knowing they'd have their answers about the flash drive sooner rather than later so they could hurry up and destroy the damn thing already, but at least leafing through the reports would give him and Loki something to do while they waited for Stark to get back to them in a few days' time.

***

A few days had come and gone with still no word from Stark about those damned HYDRA files.

Loki was growing increasingly restless by the hour. Spending days on end cooped up in their dreary motel room, scrutinising countless newspaper articles and official reports for even the most tenuous connection to the Winter Soldier, was hardly his idea of a good time.

But as tedious as it may have been to Loki, the search was unfortunately not for naught. Some of it seemed to be igniting a spark of recognition.

Bucky was perched on the edge of the bed, his chin in his palm and a growing horror in his eyes as he pored over the pages clutched in his free hand. It was an expression Loki had seen too often in the time he had known Bucky. Yet as much as it pained Bucky to learn more about the crimes he had been forced to commit for HYDRA, he refused to stop searching for those same answers that tortured him.

Loki sighed and pushed himself from his chair to cross the room. "All right, that's enough," he said while he snatched the papers from Bucky's hand. Bucky blinked, as if he wasn't quite sure what had happened, lost among the words on the page, until he looked up at Loki dropping the report onto the dining table to join all the others.

"What are you doing?"

"You've been reading about dead people all day," Loki replied, and tossed Bucky's jacket towards him. His artificial hand flew out to catch it without Bucky even needing to look. "We're going out."

"You really think that's safe with SHIELD sniffing around?"

"How will they know it's us?" Loki said, shooting Bucky a grin as the glamour unfurled across his skin.

In any case, the safety of the idea was of little concern to him. He would gladly risk SHIELD's attention if it gave him a reprieve from sitting waiting for the phone to ring. He'd spent quite enough time cooped up in wretched, claustrophobic rooms like this over his lifetime.

"Come on; you can buy me dinner."

Bucky eyed the papers on the table, clearly longing to stay and agonise over his past a while longer, but after a minute's deliberation he relented. Loki grinned again while Bucky stood and slipped his jacket on, and with a thought Bucky's face was hidden beneath another's as well, before they slipped out of the room.

It wasn't long before Loki began to regret the decision to leave it.

"This place must make the fires of Muspelheim seem positively Jotunn in comparison," he complained, dropping his head back as beads of sweat trickled down the sides of his neck. He closed his eyes to the bright sunlight for a moment, savouring what little relief from the heat the faint breeze had to offer, and looked back up at Bucky. "Why would anybody want to settle here?"

Bucky shrugged, eyes on his plate while he picked and prodded at his food without making any move to eat any of it. "I hear the surfing's good," he replied.

It was some surprise he'd even been listening. His mood hadn't much lifted in the time since they had left the motel, his brows still drawn down, frequently losing himself in his own thoughts. There was little point in questioning what those thoughts revolved around.

Loki was about to once again try and convince Bucky not to dwell on his past, lest he drive himself to the brink of madness, when Bucky pulled their phone from the pocket of his jeans. It had been silent all this time — Loki had been listening keenly himself, even amidst the noise from the other diners filling the tables outside the restaurant — yet still Bucky checked it. It was enough to quiet the well-practised speech Loki had had ready, as a more immediate concern returned to the forefront of his mind.

"Stark should have called with news by now," he said. Surely it couldn't take this long to study the files they had delivered. This was what Stark was supposed to be good at, was it not?

"Yeah. I guess he hasn't gotten around to looking at it yet." Bucky sounded as satisfied with that answer as Loki was, though he slid the phone away again without another word and returned to not eating the meal in front of him.

Loki watched him in silence for a while before he spoke again. "I have a question," he said, and Bucky looked back up to meet his gaze, wordlessly prompting him to continue. "Say Stark finally performs the one task entrusted to him, and the drive does contain the only copy of the information HYDRA gleaned from their experiments on me; what happens once we destroy it? SHIELD won't just forget about this."

Bucky dropped his fork again and sat back in his seat. "The damage will be done. Fury'll probably never let us work for SHIELD again, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing."

"What about stopping HYDRA?"

"We don't necessarily need to be part of SHIELD to help with that," Bucky replied. "Might not be so easy without SHIELD's resources, though we can still do some damage on our own. I mean, HYDRA probably still wants to reprogram me if they can get their hands on me—"

"That or kill you," Loki pointed out.

He gave another shrug. "Either way, they're gonna keep coming for us. We'd just need to stay one step ahead."

"And if there are other copies of those files?"

Bucky looked like he hadn't let himself entertain that possibility yet, clinging to whatever meagre shred of hope he could in this. He stared back at Loki for a moment before he spoke again. "Then I guess we'll just have to pray we find them before anyone else does."

"Now that could be interesting," Loki said, a smile creeping across his lips at the thought. Raiding SHIELD and HYDRA bases to steal that information from right under their noses would be one spectacular insult. He still lamented missing out the first time.

His smile didn't last long, however. He glanced from Bucky watching him with an incredulous expression towards the shops lining the other side of the sun-baked promenade, where between the crowds he spotted twin figures dressed in black, both looking equally dour as they strode down the street with more purpose than the people meandering in and out of shops around them.

"Bucky," he said, without taking his eyes off of the pair. From the movement in his peripheral vision Bucky was peering over his shoulder to look as well. "The man on the corner."

"Looks familiar. You think he's SHIELD?"

"He was there when HYDRA had me captive," Loki replied. He had hoped the man had met his deserved fate when SHIELD had taken the building that night; it was an unwelcome sight finding him alive and well before them. Though perhaps now Loki would be able to fulfil his promise of delivering the killing blow himself. "Which begs the question: are they here with HYDRA or SHIELD?"

"Either way it's bad news." Bucky glanced around their surroundings as he spoke. "There's too many civilians. It'll get messy if we stay here."

"If we try to slip away we'll risk drawing their attention, though. They shouldn't be able to identify us." But then, SHIELD shouldn't have been able to locate them on the train yet had managed to do so, and even as that thought occurred to Loki he looked back towards the pair to see the woman peering down at something in her hand. She raised her head again and pointed towards the restaurant. "But having said that..."

Bucky got to his feet with a forced nonchalance, setting down a few bills on the table before gesturing for Loki to follow him. They slipped into the throng of people heading back and forth, and after several long seconds of weaving down the street Bucky spoke. "Don't look back," he said. "Are they following?"

Loki eyed the reflection in the windscreen of an absurdly large car parked nearby. "Yes. It's only the two of them; we could take them with no trouble."

"They'll have backup close," Bucky replied. "We don't stop unless we have to."

Reluctantly, Loki nodded, and at the next car they passed he searched for another sign of their pursuers. The man was walking faster, elbowing people out of the way roughly. "Move," he barked, as the growing sound of a commotion carried towards them.

"I'd say they've spotted us," Loki said.

"This way." Bucky's hand brushed Loki's just enough to steer him to the right as they reached the end of the promenade. Around the corner was a set of glass doors leading into a gleaming shopping mall, and their steps quickened as he and Bucky slipped inside.

There were plenty of people inside the concourse, the room buzzing with noise and activity, though they were too spread out across the cavernous space for the two of them to disappear among the crowd this time. And while the chance of civilians getting caught in the crossfire was markedly lower than it had been outside, Bucky would still certainly do everything in his power to avoid a confrontation here.

They wouldn't be able to escape one for long, though.

Bucky broke into a light jog towards the centre of the room, just barely pulling ahead of Loki's long strides while Loki glanced over his shoulder to see the agents charging through the entrance after them. A hand quickly tugged at Loki's wrist again, and he let Bucky pull him into the narrow gap between the escalators and one of the thick pillars supporting the walkways crisscrossing above.

He and Bucky were silent, Loki's heart racing, while they stood waiting for the others to pass their position. Once they had gone striding by and slipped out of sight again Loki grinned, looking back at Bucky pressed close against him to seize his lips for a hungry kiss. It caught Bucky by surprise, though as much as Loki may have wanted to, he didn't linger long enough for Bucky to respond.

"This is exhilarating, isn't it?" Loki said as he pulled back.

A soft laugh slipped from Bucky's lips while his gaze returned to the crowd, searching for the ideal moment to duck back the way they had come without being detected. "You've got a strange sense of fun, sweetheart," he said warmly.

But the moment wasn't to last. After little more than a second, Bucky's eyes widened as they fixed on something beyond Loki's field of vision, and apprehension flooded onto his features.

"No, no; keep going."

Loki peered around the pillar to take a look himself. The pair had come to a halt, as he had suspected from Bucky's whispered plea, the woman looking down again while the man scanned the area. They had realised something was amiss. The man seemed to be saying something, and the woman responded with a nod before she too turned back to face their direction.

"They know we've doubled back."

While Bucky spoke Loki glanced in the opposite direction, craning his neck to see past the stalls and groups of people milling about, towards the other side of the room. There was a bank of elevators lining the wall, and as Loki watched a man stepped from one sliding what looked to be a set of car key into his pocket.

"I have an idea."

Loki closed his hand around Bucky's to pull him from their hiding spot just before the agents passed it again on the other side. They quickly made their way across the room, their path perfect for Loki to bump into the man's side when they brushed past him. He didn't even notice as Loki's fingers slipped into his pocket to hook out his keys.

"Hey watch it, jackass," he called after them while they hurried on towards the elevators and ducked into a waiting carriage. He turned to head on his way again, no thought to checking his now empty pocket, as the doors closed behind Loki and Bucky.

"Good thinking," Bucky said.

"Oh, I'd say so," replied Loki, showing off the keys in his hand in response to the questioning glance Bucky shot him. He looked anything but surprised to be presented with them.

"You know—" he jabbed the button for the parking level and the carriage lurched into motion "—one of these days we should really think about buying a car of our own instead of stealing other people's all the time."

"Where would be the fun in that?"

Once they had found the car and climbed inside Loki let the glamour disguising them fade away, and they sped back to their motel, hopefully before anybody could follow them. Yet when they reached it Bucky made no attempt to head inside. Instead they remained in place, barely a word passing between them, sat watching the building in the growing darkness until Bucky was satisfied nobody else was doing the same.

"Do you think SHIELD will have found us here?" Loki said when they at last began to make their way cautiously towards their room.

"They're finding us everywhere else," Bucky replied. "I'm not taking any chances."

He paused outside their door, listening for some sound of movement inside. When none came they slipped into the room and Loki immediately crossed into the cramped bathroom to make sure it was empty as well. Everything was where they had left it.

"I think we're safe for now," Loki said, while Bucky strode towards the window to ensure it was locked before closing the curtains. "Though if we have been followed, they could arrive at any time."

Bucky nodded. "We'll sleep in shifts. Keep them from catching us unawares."

Loki had been about to suggest the same himself, even as he hoped it wouldn't be necessary. If SHIELD was going to come for them again, he'd rather get it over with. It wasn't as if they had been able to give him and Bucky much trouble yet anyway; he didn't doubt that the two of them would find some way to escape SHIELD again the next time they attacked. It was the waiting part that Loki hated.

He gestured for Bucky to take his place on the bed. "Go on. I'll wake you in a few hours," he said, rounding the other side of the bed to take a seat atop it and assume his watch while Bucky undressed and climbed under the covers.

Things were quiet for a time, the only sound Bucky's slow, soft breathing beside Loki as sleep claimed him. But after an hour or two of gazing blankly towards the locked door and descending far enough into mind-numbing boredom that even looking through the folder from Stark was beginning to seem like a worthy distraction, there came a noise from somewhere outside their room.

Loki frowned and sat forward. He was fully focused now. The noise sounded like footsteps approaching, shuffling on the threadbare carpet in the hall. It could have been another guest making their way to their own room, though Loki wouldn't have thought anybody would be moving around this late. But if SHIELD had found them again — if it was indeed SHIELD they had encountered before — that surely meant they had devised some way to track him and Bucky that they couldn't anticipate.

Unless—

Before he could finish that thought the footsteps drew nearer and there was a noise of something gently hitting the door. Loki tensed, and slowly he reached for the blade stashed in his boot as the person on the other side of the door twisted the doorknob. They tried again when it wouldn't open, though just as Loki was climbing to his feet the scrabbling stopped, and the footsteps seemed to stumble away a little.

Loki quietly stepped towards the door, wiping away the layer of dust covering the peephole with his fingertip while he clutched his knife tighter in his other hand, ready to strike.

He didn't need to, as it turned out.

He gazed out at the man in the corridor to see him fumbling to open the door opposite theirs, giving up after a moment and staggering towards the next. It was a decidedly unthreatening sight. The moment the man had disappeared out of view Loki sighed and let out a quiet laugh. Bucky's paranoia was evidently contagious.

Of course, the man could still be a SHIELD agent, his drunken stupor merely an act, though Loki wasn't quite ready to believe that. It would serve little purpose lulling the two of them into a false sense of security, when anyone following them was surely aware by now that the only hope they had of capturing the pair was with extreme force rather than stealth. Besides, the stench of alcohol clinging to the man was strong enough to seep from the hallway into their room and sting Loki's nostrils.

But still Loki remained on guard as he returned to his spot on the bed, the knife still close at hand while he settled in again and glanced down at Bucky. He was curled on his side close to Loki, sleeping soundly for a change, his artificial arm catching the low light creeping through the curtains with every slow rise and fall of his chest. Loki brushed back a section of hair that had fallen across Bucky's face as gently as he could to keep from waking him, before resting his hand over Bucky's shoulder with a soft smile and turning his attention back to the door.

It was an odd juxtaposition, the rough skin of Bucky's scars meeting the smooth metal, warmth quickly turning to something cold and hard, but it was a familiar one by now. It was more of a surprise to feel only the soft whirring and vibrations of the mechanics inside Bucky's arm beneath his fingers. There was no trembling, no sudden jolts back into consciousness to escape the horrors he so often found in his dreams; instead Bucky was as quiet as the hallway outside their door remained for the rest of the night, stirring only when the light of dawn began to seep into the room.

He opened his eyes slowly, blinking away the residual hold of sleep. It took him a moment to gain his bearings, but when he did he looked up at Loki with a frown. "Why'd you let me sleep all night?"

"You needed it," Loki replied simply as he climbed to his feet.

Bucky struggled into a seating position and eventually did the same, disappearing into the bathroom while Loki rolled his shoulders to loosen the muscles left stiff from spending all night sat in the same spot. He pulled open the curtains and huffed when his gaze landed on the small cafe across the street. He'd had all night to accept the reality that they would be almost exclusively confined to this room until they heard from Stark, though the thought that an occasional trip to the vending machine at the end of the hall would be his only escape from these four walls remained a thoroughly unappealing one.

But they certainly couldn't risk being seen in public again.

"So I'm guessing I didn't miss anything in the night?" Bucky said when he stepped back into the main room a few minutes later and retrieved his jeans from the floor to climb back into them.

Loki shook his head, tearing his eyes from the window after a moment to glance back at Bucky. He'd paused, midway through buttoning his shirt, and was watching him curiously.

"What's on your mind?" he said while he stepped closer.

"I've been thinking about how SHIELD may have tracked us down."

Bucky arched his eyebrows at that. It would certainly put them at an advantage to know how SHIELD had managed to find them, if Loki was correct in his hypothesis. Yet it wouldn't offer much comfort if he was.

"I'm listening."

"The magic," he replied. "By definition it's a disruption of the natural order. If SHIELD has found a way to identify that energy disturbance, the glamour that has allowed us to move around outside could have been acting as a beacon leading them to us."

"What about this one?" Bucky said, looking down at Loki's pale forearms, his fingers ghosting along his skin. "Won't SHIELD be able to detect this as well?"

"It's different. This form takes no effort to sustain. I'm able to slip in and out of it far easier than any illusion that could signal our location." Or so he hoped. He had no way to be truly sure — though the fact that SHIELD had yet to follow them here was a good sign. "I have my own theory as to why."

"Yeah?"

"My mother," he said, and Bucky nodded, in no need of elaboration.

It was a theory he'd been pondering since realising how effortless he found adopting this form. Whoever she was, Loki's mother certainly wasn't Jotunn, and if she had indeed looked largely human it would explain why he could maintain the illusion without expending any energy on it. The thought was purely conjecture, naturally, yet he had so far been unable to find a better explanation.

"So no more magic, then," Bucky said, considering for a moment before meeting Loki's gaze again. He didn't look overly concerned by the prospect. "Shouldn't be too—"

Something changed in Bucky's demeanour then, his back growing rigid with tension, eyes flicking to the door while a frown descended heavy on his brows. Loki soon heard it as well: slow, deliberate footsteps, far removed from the awkward shuffle that had set his nerves on edge during the night.

"Someone's coming," Bucky whispered. His gaze quickly shot to the window while he crept towards the door, gauging the best way to make their escape should they be overpowered, and he pressed himself against the wall to listen carefully to the sounds in the hallway.

"There's just one." Loki followed Bucky, clutching his knife again as he moved to flank the other side of the door. He'd thought SHIELD would send more for them — though this could just be the distraction. There were almost certainly others close behind, moving into position while Loki and Bucky waited for them to strike.

A slight smile curled at Loki's lip at the thought. It was about time.

Bucky gave a curt nod. "Sounds that way," he breathed.

The footsteps came to a halt outside their door and Loki held his breath in anticipation, until the silence broke with a soft rap against the wood. Loki blinked. That wasn't quite how he'd expected SHIELD to announce their arrival. He looked over at a similarly confused Bucky as he eyed Loki in return before gingerly peering through the peephole.

In an instant the tension in his stance disappeared. "Are you kidding me?" he said to himself, and he yanked the door open, roughly pulling their visitor into the room and poking his head back out into the hall to check if anybody else had followed. Loki's eyes flicked to the man as he pushed back the hood of his sweatshirt.

"Captain Rogers," Loki said in greeting while Bucky closed and locked the door again.

"Morning."

"What the hell are you playing at, Steve?"

He looked back at Bucky in surprise. "You said SHIELD tracked you down on the train," he replied, his tone suggesting he'd thought the reason for his arrival had been obvious.

"So you decided to lead them straight to us again?" Bucky said.

"Nobody knows I'm not in New York. Pepper Potts managed to sneak me out of the city under the radar."

"Has quite a knack for smuggling people across the country, that one," Loki said as he strolled back towards the dining table to sink into a chair now that the threat of an imminent fight was gone, while Bucky remained in place against the door, arms folded across his chest and an unimpressed look still clinging firmly to his features.

"I couldn't just sit by while you two were in trouble," Rogers continued earnestly.

Eventually Bucky's glare softened ever so slightly, and he sighed. "You're sleeping on the floor," he said.

Rogers smiled at that. "That's fair."

Bucky was still staring back at him in disapproval, though before he could presumably admonish Rogers for taking the risk of journeying out to them their phone began to ring. At long last. Loki rifled through the papers littering the tabletop beside him to snatch it up, and Bucky and Rogers both turned to watch in interest.

"Please tell me you have finally taken a look at that flash drive," he said as he answered the call. He wasn't in the mood to bother with niceties with Stark. He rarely was, if he was honest, but the desire was even less pronounced than usual this morning. They had been waiting for answers too long for him to abide listening to a word that didn't involve what Stark had found out.

" _No_ ," Stark began.

Immediately Loki cut him off. "Then what do you want?"

" _You're going to regret taking that tone with me when you hear what I have to say_."

Loki rolled his eyes in response. He wasn't sure what news Stark could be calling with that would have any relevance to them if it wasn't about the drive, though he made no other comment, and when Stark was apparently content that Loki was ready to listen he continued with his self-satisfied announcement.

" _I have a way to get SHIELD off your backs_."


	6. Chapter 6

Bucky watched as Loki's disgruntled expression quickly melted away, the phone still pressed to his ear but nothing in his features to hint at what Stark was saying. "What is it?" Bucky said anxiously while he stepped forward to join Loki at the table.

Loki didn't reply. Without looking up at Bucky, or Steve dropping his backpack and coming to stand behind the other chair, he set the phone back down on top of the messy piles of notes and hit the speakerphone button.

"— _shut you up, hasn't it_?" Stark was saying as his voice suddenly echoed into the room.

"Why; what's happened?" Bucky said. His fingers curled around the back of the chair in front of him, his mind reeling with terrible thoughts of what Stark could have found on that drive. What if there were other copies of HYDRA's intelligence on Loki, spread out in HYDRA bases scattered across the world? He and Loki could never hope to find them all quickly enough. This would have all been for nothing.

Luckily, before Bucky could start to panic too much Stark spoke again. " _The idea's been rattling around in my head since I last saw you two_ ," he started.

Bucky let out a sigh of relief at that. If there was any news about the drive Stark would have opened with it. It didn't mean he wouldn't find something eventually, but for now Bucky could breathe deep.

" _I dismissed it at first, but I've been ironing out the kinks all night. I think it could work_."

"What idea?"

" _We go public about HYDRA. Call a press conference; spill the beans about their activities, and SHIELD's attempt to keep it quiet. It should give Fury something to think about besides chasing after you_."

"Huh," Steve said.

Bucky had to admit he was impressed himself, though not enough to agree to the idea right off the bat. It felt a little too good to be true at the moment. He eyed Loki, blank-faced as he sat watching for Bucky's reaction, but before Bucky could question the details of the plan and weigh up whether it was worth it Stark's voice crackled up from the table again.

" _It comes with a caveat, though_."

He'd expected as much. "Let's hear it."

" _Exposing HYDRA means people will start looking into what exactly the organisation has been getting up to all this time_."

Yeah, Bucky would say that definitely constituted a caveat. He released his tight grip on the backrest of the chair, slapping his palm against the painted wood with less frustration than he probably should have been feeling, as he took a step back from the table.

Steve pulled his own chair out to slide into it with a frown. "I'm not seeing how that's a problem," he said, looking from the phone to Bucky for someone to slot the puzzle pieces into place.

"He's talking about the Winter Soldier."

Immediately comprehension dawned in Steve's eyes. He sank heavily against the backrest of his chair as his gaze dropped and he lost himself in thought. The news that Bucky had survived the fall only to be turned into HYDRA's weapon, murdering scores of innocent people in the decades since his apparent death, hadn't been easy for him to hear — nor had it been a joy for Bucky to reveal — but Steve had mostly taken it in stride. Bucky suspected he just tried desperately not to think about it. Faced with the reality of Bucky's past again now, though, it brought a pained look to his face.

" _Bingo_."

Loki scoffed. "So just one small drawback, then," he said, the sarcasm biting with the words matched by the amount of vitriol on his face while he glanced back down at the phone. If Stark could see that look, he'd be glad he wasn't here telling them this in person.

Bucky chewed on his lip for a moment, his back against the wall and arms folded across his chest again, while he considered their options. "Do it," he said finally, and Loki's gaze snapped back to him in disbelief.

"You can't be serious."

"Yeah, I'm with Loki on this," Steve said. "How will sending the US government after you — as well as any other country the Winter Soldier might have operated in — on top of SHIELD help anything?"

"Tony's right; best case scenario is SHIELD ends up so distracted by the media attention and pressure to do more in stamping out HYDRA that they drop the search for us completely. Worst case, it at least buys us some time to either destroy that flash drive or get a head start on finding the other copies out there without SHIELD's interference."

"No," Loki said, "the worst case is you're exposed as the Winter Soldier and held accountable for HYDRA's crimes, while HYDRA goes even further underground, making our task of stopping them that much harder. Not that we could act against them anyway, with you imprisoned — or worse."

"There's a good chance no-one will ever be able to tell it's me." He pushed himself away from the wall with his foot as he spoke and returned to the table, resting his forearms against the empty chair and meeting Loki's gaze. "We've only ever found a handful of blurry shots of me in the field ourselves. The only time you can make out my face is—" he swallowed, the lump in his throat keeping him from finishing that sentence. The thought of how HYDRA had turned him into the Winter Soldier still had bile rising from his gut, the image of him strapped down in that dingy room powerless to stop the lifetime of horrors about to be unleashed on him too fresh in his mind even this long after Bucky had first seen that old photograph.

Thankfully Stark knew where Bucky was going with his point before he had to force the words out. " _I should be able to have Jarvis scrub that file from SHIELD's servers_ ," he said. " _No-one will find it_."

Bucky nodded. "Thanks."

"But what about your arm?" Steve said. "Your face might be hidden, but a metal arm makes you pretty easy to identify."

He slid his hand into his pocket in response, the rest of his arm hidden by the long sleeve of his shirt. It was hardly sophisticated, but it had worked for him so far, and from the way Steve opened and closed his mouth before sitting back with a brief nod, the demonstration was enough to satisfy his concerns.

"So what would you need from us?" Bucky said to Stark.

" _If we make news of HYDRA's actions public we'll need evidence to back up our claims. Do you still have all your notebooks of serial killer ramblings_?"

"You know that's not what they are, right?"

" _Doesn't matter. There's information about your HYDRA missions inside, isn't there_?"

"Uh, yeah." He'd been making rough notes of just about everything he could remember, whether it was the more-or-less fully formed memories Loki had managed to unearth from under Bucky's Winter Soldier programming, or the confused flashes of information that still came creeping back to him every so often. Some of it involved what had to be Winter Soldier missions, though they were mixed in amongst snippets of Bucky's time in the war, and his life before it. "There's probably more detail in the information you've been digging out from SHIELD, though."

" _Yeah, that's my first port of call_ ," Stark said. " _But it could be there are some things you've remembered that have gone unnoticed by the rest of us. It'll give us a starting place to look deeper_."

"Well the notebooks were all back at Stark Tower, but if SHIELD swept through the apartment they could have taken them." He was really regretting not bringing them with him by this point. But in their hurry to get away from the tower he hadn't thought to pack more than the essentials, and since he'd expected this to have all blown over by now his notebooks hadn't qualified. That had been a shockingly naive thought, in hindsight.

" _Pepper's still in New York; I'm sure she won't mind having a look for them. If we're actually doing this, I mean_."

Bucky eyed Steve questioningly. He didn't need to put voice to the words.

"I'm on board if you are," Steve said, and Bucky glanced over to Loki.

"Loki?"

He let out an exaggeratedly long sigh in response, the sound turning into a groan towards the end, as he stared up at the ceiling like he was hoping he'd find his answer in the damp stains and cracked paintwork. When he met Bucky's gaze again there was resignation in his eyes. "They'll never see it coming," he said grudgingly.

That was a yes, then. Bucky grinned.

"So how does this play out?" he said to Stark, his eyes still fixed on Loki while Loki let out one last huff of dissatisfaction. Ordinarily he'd have loved this, pulling the rug out from under SHIELD in a way Fury could have never predicted. The risk only added to the thrill — but not this time, apparently. Not when Bucky was the one in danger.

_I can arrange a press conference for later today_ ," Stark replied. " _Captain, I'm thinking this news will sound better coming from you. Lends a little authority to the proceedings if the guy famous for supposedly stopping HYDRA is the one telling people they're still active_."

Steve nodded. "When do you need me?"

" _As soon as possible. Gives us a few hours to get prepped. We'll have a lot of questions to answer_."

"What can Loki and I do?" Bucky said.

" _As of this moment? Not a lot. Stay hidden, and let us deal with the press conference. You'll know your next move afterwards, depending on how this plays out_."

Bucky had been afraid that would be his answer. But it was a solid plan, even if it did mean Bucky had to sit back and let the others clean up his mess for him. Maybe some good would even come out of it, if it meant HYDRA became more than just SHIELD's dirty little secret. God knows their attempts to uncover the double agents still in their midst weren't going nearly fast enough.

"Okay," Bucky said, despite his reservations. "But you know this puts you two in SHIELD's sights as well. Are you sure you want to get involved in this crap?"

He could have predicted Steve's response before he even spoke, and sure enough there was a cocky smile waiting on his face when Bucky looked his way. He had learnt to be wary of that look over the years, but now Bucky was glad to see it. "Positive," Steve said, and pushed himself to his feet again. "Stark, I'm heading over to you now."

" _In that case, we'll see you two on the other side_." He ended the call, and Loki scooped up the phone again while Steve gathered his things and headed back out of the room.

Once they were alone Bucky flopped down into the seat next to Loki's. "So I guess we've got some time to kill," he said.

That seemed to be all they'd been doing recently, and it didn't get any easier with practice. It didn't sit well with him, being so reliant on others who had no business getting involved in this. Now that Steve and Stark were making their support public there was no going back for them, and waiting here doing nothing while they put their asses on the line for him felt all kinds of wrong.

But this part, the publicity and media circus of it all, was their world more than it had ever been his; he had to trust they knew what they were doing, even if it did feel like he was throwing them to the wolves. And they'd be safe for the moment, at least. There'd be repercussions from SHIELD, maybe even HYDRA, but those would come later, once this was all out in the open. Still, Bucky was a nervous wreck as the day wore on, pacing and fidgeting and driving Loki to distraction while they waited for news.

In the end Loki snapped. "For goodness' sake," he said, "would you please sit down?"

Bucky relented with a sigh and stalked back across the room to drop down onto the foot of the bed beside Loki. His hand fell to rest on Loki's thigh out of habit, thumb absently rubbing soft circles against the inside of his leg as they sat in silence for a few seconds. He didn't feel any more relaxed than he had while he'd been pacing.

"I bet you wish SHIELD was attacking us again now," Loki said with a wry smirk, and at the glint of humour in his eyes a smile tugged at Bucky's own lips.

"Would be a nice distraction," he said, before glancing to the window. Things had been quiet all day, the parking lot outside their window almost completely empty, no sign SHIELD had followed them to the motel. He just hoped it would stay that way. "I think you might be right, you know, about the magic."

"I hope not."

Bucky looked back at him in surprise. "You do?" he said. "What, you miss being able to go out in public that much?"

"Well yes, for one thing," Loki said emphatically, and a soft laugh filtered up from Bucky's chest. He should have seen that answer coming. Loki seemed to have resigned himself to his fate for now, though, which was probably for the best while Bucky took his turn climbing the walls. "But I've grown so used to the magic it's a concerted effort to keep from using it. At any time I could slip without thinking, and SHIELD would again know where we are."

Bucky nodded, his gaze dropping from Loki to the floor as he considered the possibility. Loki did have a point; even Bucky took it for granted sometimes that Loki could disguise them both or summon something to them at the drop of a hat. After centuries with that ability at his fingertips, it had to be one hell of an adjustment trying not to use it.

"Hopefully it won't matter after today," Bucky said at last while he eyed Loki again.

Loki was about to meet his gaze when his attention flicked to the small TV sitting on top of the dresser. "It's on," he said, turning up the volume as Bucky turned to watch the news report playing onscreen as well.

"... _months after the surprise revelation he had survived almost seventy years frozen in the Arctic Circle, Captain America has shocked the world again this afternoon_ ," the reporter was saying, stood outside the Stark Industries building where a gaggle of people could still be seen in the background gathered near an empty podium. There was no sign of Steve or Stark outside the building, though after a moment they appeared onscreen when the report cut to footage of Steve's announcement.

He was stood at that same podium with Stark at his shoulder while he addressed the crowd, wearing his Captain America uniform as if people wouldn't recognise him without it. They probably wouldn't, actually, knowing how little the wider world seemed to care about Steve independently of Captain America. But he held himself the way he always did when he had something to fight for, back straight and eyes steely, the vibrant colour of the picture just about the only thing differentiating this footage from the countless newsreels Steve had ended up appearing in during the war.

There was a collective gasp when Steve mentioned HYDRA, followed by a scramble of people jumping to their feet ready with a barrage of questions, though before Bucky could watch the aftermath there was a shrill ring from the mattress behind them.

Bucky practically threw himself back on the bed to snatch up the phone. "How did it go?" he said.

" _As well as it could, I suppose_ ," Stark said over the murmur of other voices in the background.

"Meaning?"

" _You think we can publicly accuse a global peacekeeping organisation of having been secretly infiltrated by Nazi terrorists for decades and people will just accept it_? _I've been answering the same dozen questions for the last two hours. Everybody wants to know what the hell's been happening at SHIELD — which, speaking of; hang on_."

His voice dropped away, replaced by the muffled sound of someone else addressing Stark in an urgent tone. Bucky couldn't fully make out what Stark was saying in response, though he didn't need to. There was only one thing they could be talking about.

" _Anyway_ ," Stark said as his voice returned over the line after a minute or two, " _the Secretary of Defence has called for an emergency hearing in Washington tomorrow. Cap and I have been summoned to attend."_

Bucky frowned and sat forward, ready to spring up into action, though what he could possibly do to be any help in this situation he had no idea. "For punishment?"

" _Only if they think we're lying. It'll be pretty standard. A boring speech or two, they'll look at our evidence, try and figure out if we're telling the truth, and then comes the finger pointing and hand wringing of deciding who's to blame and how to fix it. They're sure to be hauling Fury in as well. Point is, jet's leaving for DC this evening. There's room for you and Loki to tag along — or are you going to stay and work on your tans a while_?"

Bucky didn't even have time to respond before Stark went on.

" _Yeah, didn't think so_ ," he said. " _Better get packing, then. We'll swing by to collect you two once we're finally done here_."

It was another couple of hours before Stark's car pulled into the parking lot and they sped towards a quiet airstrip where his private jet was waiting. Bucky scanned the area as they crossed the tarmac to climb aboard, straining his eyes in the low light, though there didn't seem to be any sign of SHIELD watching them.

"How good do you think our chances are that SHIELD will stop coming for us?" Bucky said after they'd been in the air a while, glancing from the window to Stark sat in the plush leather seat opposite his. Bucky hadn't been on many airplanes in his time, but none he could remember held a candle to the luxury of Stark's jet. It wasn't much of a surprise, really.

"Honestly?" Stark's expression was all Bucky really needed to know his answer.

Bucky sighed in response as his gaze returned to the vast stretches of black visible from his window, broken only by the occasional lights of a town now the sprawling network of bright cities along the coast was long gone. "Yeah, I'd figured it was a long shot."

"Fury'll know this shitstorm came from you. It's not really a kiss-and-make-up kind of situation. But you're not the big fish anymore; you should have a few days of peace."

Bucky nodded. And with his and Loki's movements apparently undetected for now, SHIELD shouldn't know where they were when the time came to pick up the search again. Even if they did suspect he and Loki had followed the others to DC, as long as the two of them could stay out of trouble and keep from putting themselves back on SHIELD's radar, no-one would have any way to be sure. That could buy them a little more time.

"Then I can see what there is to see on your flash drive once this hearing's out of the way and we've gathered all the evidence we need," Stark went on. "Pepper's on her way up to meet us as well — she's probably already at the hotel by now. She found your notebooks at the apartment."

That was one hell of a relief to hear. Regardless of whether or not they'd be important in exposing HYDRA, If SHIELD had claimed Bucky's notebooks that would have been a huge window to his past lost to him. "They were all there?"

"No idea. The things always seemed to have multiplied every time I ever saw them." His voice trailed off while looked over to Loki asleep in the seat beside Bucky and he blinked, his brow furrowing. "Does he do that a lot?"

Bucky turned to look, as much as he could with Loki's head resting against his shoulder. He couldn't see Loki's face from his angle, but his hands had slipped back into their natural shade, and the air around them had grown a touch colder while ice crystals slowly gathered around Loki's fingers.

"You'd be surprised," Bucky replied, and as he watched the ice shrank back into nothing again, followed by the blue of Loki's Jotunn form. He was just glad Loki's hands hadn't been pressed against Bucky's bare skin like they usually were when it happened. That was never a fun way to be woken up.

"Huh." Stark looked between the two of them. "You guys have got to be the weirdest people I've ever met."

Bucky could believe that. He looked to the window again with a smile and fell silent, the only sound over the muted noise of the engines Steve's loud snoring from his seat across the aisle, until they landed in DC in the early hours of the morning.

But they didn't have time to relax once they'd reached their hotel. They still had seventy years' worth of HYDRA's machinations to sort through before Steve and Stark were due to appear at the hearing later that day. The files they'd found buried in SHIELD's servers last year were probably more than enough to both prove HYDRA was still active and give whatever intelligence agencies would be investigating this somewhere to start looking, though it couldn't hurt to get a jump on finding proof of other HYDRA missions while they had some time to spare.

"What about this one?" Steve said, and handed Bucky a photocopied newspaper article in a language he couldn't read, along with a page of text translated into English. They were sat at the long dining table in his and Loki's suite, the papers from Stark that he still hadn't made a dent in spread out across the table between them. Stark and Pepper were busy making copies of SHIELD's files up in their own suite on the top floor, while Loki stayed as far out of everybody's way as he could, stood at the window watching the sun rise over downtown Washington.

"Up-and-coming Ukrainian politician, died suddenly," Steve continued, looking back at the notebook Bucky had grabbed from Pepper to consult the timeline of events Bucky had been trying to put together inside it. "It looks like the Winter Soldier was active in Ukraine around the time."

Bucky read through the translated report and stared back at the photograph of the man. Nothing about the story was ringing any bells, but then there were plenty of assassinations he knew he'd been responsible for which he still had no memory of. "Could be," he said as he gazed up from the article to the three neat stacks of paper among the sheets scattered across the tabletop. "Which one's the maybe pile again?"

"The largest one."

Bucky sighed while he set the pages on top of it. It was going to take longer to go through all of this than he'd thought. He picked up his coffee mug and pushed himself out from his seat, gulping down the last lukewarm mouthful of his drink as he crossed the room to pour himself a refill. He grabbed an unused mug from beside the coffee machine to fill that too, and rounded the overstuffed couch to join Loki at the window.

"How's it looking?" he said as he handed Loki the mug. Loki took it without glancing away from the window, grimacing once he'd taken a sip. He set the mug on the windowsill and didn't take another.

"Well nobody has stormed the building yet," Loki replied, before twisting to peer back towards the table. "Anything?"

He wasn't sure which Loki would prefer: them finding evidence of more assassinations Bucky had committed or spending all this time looking through the files to find nothing. "Nothing solid," Bucky said. "But that shouldn't be important today."

This was for Bucky's benefit more than anyone else's at this point. Somewhere down the line people might want to know everything HYDRA had been up to over the years, but for now the only person who cared was Bucky.

"Oh, God."

Bucky and Loki's heads both snapped towards the table again at Steve's voice. "What is it?" Bucky said as he quickly stepped back to join him.

"Oh no, nothing. Sorry," he replied, shaking his head with an apologetic smile, before glancing back down at the page in his hands. Bucky set his mug on the table and slid the paper from between Steve's fingers to take a look himself. "I knew Howard had died; I'd just never heard how it happened before."

"Howard?" Loki's voice was close by when it sounded, and Bucky sensed rather than heard him step closer while he sank back down into his seat. He was too focused on the police report in front of him to pay much attention.

"Howard Stark, Tony's father. We worked closely with him back in the war. He was killed in a car accident — it's not the end I would have hoped for him."

"It wasn't an accident," Bucky said weakly, the awful realisation hitting him as he stared in horror at the too-familiar image, the burned out wreck of Howard's sedan wrapped around a tree at the side of a quiet stretch of road.

He'd seen this before.

He'd caused it.


	7. Chapter 7

Silence hung thick in the air between them, like it was some living, breathing thing that had invaded the room with the news of Bucky's connection to Howard's death, stealing the words from them all before they could put voice to them. Steve opened his mouth, closed it again, his eyes dropping back to the tabletop as the dismay in his expression grew. It wasn't exactly an easy revelation to digest.

Bucky wouldn't have expected it to be. He was horrified by it himself.

In the end it was Loki's voice that pierced both the stillness of the room and the chaos of Bucky's thoughts. "You can't be sure—"

"I'm sure."

"Why, because you happened to dream of a car crash a week ago? What does that prove?"

"It wasn't just some random crash I saw; it was this," replied Bucky, gesturing to the report he'd dropped to the table as if the paper had burned him. He'd known it had felt too real, too familiar, to be nothing. He never should have shrugged it off.

Loki pulled the page towards himself with one long finger, picking it up like it was something filthy he didn't want to touch, but instead of studying the photograph himself like Bucky would have expected he set it back on the table face down, keeping it from all of their sights. The damage was already done, though. Loki turned to stalk past the table, hands on his hips and a thoughtful frown no doubt settling on his brow, and Bucky watched him without a word in the renewed hush.

"What about Tony?" Steve said finally. "Do you think he knows?"

"Shit," was all Bucky could manage to say in response. He squeezed his eyes shut and leant forward to bury his face in his hands.

Bucky hadn't even thought of him. They couldn't have spoken about Howard more than twice in the time they'd known each other, yet as far as he knew, Stark had never had any reason to suspect foul play when it came to Howard's death — but why would he? It wasn't like anybody else had known either. This was a curveball for all of them.

God, the news would crush him.

"If Stark was aware of the truth behind his father's death, I'd wager we would know it," Loki said.

"You've got to tell him."

Bucky straightened again and looked back over at Steve watching him, but before he could respond Loki whirled back round to face them as well. "Don't be absurd," Loki said. "You can't tell him."

"What happens if he finds out on his own someday and realises we've kept it from him?" Steve shot back. "He'd never forgive us."

"And what compelling reason do we have to believe that will ever happen? By telling him we would guarantee it — and risk incurring his wrath in the process. Why make an enemy of him when we can let him live out the rest of his days in ignorance?"

"He might react better if the news came from us."

"' _Might_.'"

"Would you two shut up a sec?" Bucky said, cutting off the next argument either of them had been about to offer, and he sat massaging his temples for a moment. This was starting to hurt his head. But thankfully the stubborn fight that had been steadily building in each of their stances evaporated, and their eyes fell to Bucky while they waited for him to share his own thoughts. "I don't know what I'm going to do," he sighed.

There was a knock at the door as Bucky looked back up at the two of them again. His gaze snapped to it, eyes wide, half-expecting Stark to have somehow overheard their conversation and come charging in to confront him. But when the door opened, it was just Pepper poking her head into the room.

That might not be much better, though. Bucky doubted he looked any better than he felt, and Steve and Loki were both still pretty shell-shocked themselves. One glance at the three of them and Pepper was sure to know something had happened. Luckily her gaze didn't linger on Bucky and Loki long enough to notice.

"There you are," she said when her eyes landed on Steve. "We'll be heading out in about twenty minutes — is that okay?"

"Sure," Steve replied with a forced smile. "Just let me go get changed and I'll be ready."

"We'll meet you outside your room soon, then."

The smile stayed plastered to Steve's face until Pepper had closed the door again and the tension suffocating the room had lifted, and he blew out a long breath. "Are you going to be okay?" he said to Bucky, his eyes filled with concern, as he stood.

Bucky nodded, though it was more an automatic response than anything. He was so very, very far from okay.

"Hang in there. We'll try and figure this out together tomorrow." He gaze Bucky's shoulder a reassuring squeeze while he passed, and headed out of the room.

Loki stared at the door for a moment once Steve had disappeared through it, before looking back to Bucky. There was something almost questioning, uncertain, in his features, searching for something he could say before the silence descended around them again, though Bucky couldn't hold his gaze long enough for Loki to find it. He eyed the report in front of him again, fingers shaking slightly as they stretched out to turn it back over.

Loki was at Bucky's side, his hand pressing the page firmly to the table, sooner than Bucky could reach it. "No good will come of it," he said, dropping his hand and stepping back again when Bucky nodded in response.

But that wasn't the only way to find the information he needed. Bucky pushed himself out of his chair as the thought occurred to him, and slipped past Loki to take a seat at the other end of the table where Steve had left his laptop.

"What are you doing?" Loki said while Bucky started up the computer.

"If telling Stark is the right thing to do, we need to know all the facts ourselves first," Bucky replied. And if there was some tiny part of him wishing he might find something to prove he hadn't actually been the one responsible, that his dream had just been some strange fluke or it was another HYDRA agent that had finished the job, he didn't dare to hope. He already knew just how painfully unlikely that was.

"It's odd; I could have sworn the words had actually left my mouth," Loki said to himself, with the mask of a curious frown on his face. "Evidently not."

"You gonna help or not, wise guy?"

Loki looked powerlessly between the computer and the stacks of papers on the table. "How am I to do that?"

Bucky met his eyes for a second. There really wasn't much he could do. There probably wouldn't even be anything Bucky could do in this. If it had taken him this long to learn of his involvement in Howard's death, the information had to be buried deep, and he had no idea where to even begin trying to uncover it.

But he had to try.

"Moral support?" he offered with a shrug.

Loki nodded and dropped into the chair beside Bucky. "I offer fair warning, though," he said, "I've never been much good at it."

Bucky smiled — as much of a smile as he could muster, at least, which wasn't a lot — while he gazed from Loki back to the computer. "Well, then I'll appreciate the effort."

That effort didn't amount to much more than trying not to sigh too audibly or fidget too much as the hours stretched by, but still his close presence was comfort enough, and enough to help ease some of Bucky's growing frustration. There wasn't much to find that contradicted the official line that Howard's death had been accidental — or if there was, Bucky sure as hell couldn't find it. Yet despite suspecting that going in, it didn't stop him wanting to hurl the damn laptop across the room as everything he found, from supposedly in-depth examinations to conspiracy think pieces, came up with nothing he didn't already know.

It was at yet another dead end that Bucky finally sank back into his chair with a huff and rubbed at his eyes. It was becoming all too obvious that this was a waste of time. But if he could just find something, anything, to suggest there was more information out there that he'd be able to track down...

"You tried." There wasn't much empathy in Loki's tone when he spoke. He was probably just relieved Bucky was close to giving up for the night. He climbed to his feet and turned to face Bucky, nodding back towards the bedroom door as his gaze softened. "Come on," he said, and Bucky reluctantly turned off the computer, dejection weighing his movements when he got up to follow.

Hours later he was still wide awake, sat at the edge of the bed staring blankly at the wall opposite in the darkness. He had nothing to distract from his thoughts now. It was like the floodgates had opened, the memories of Howard's death rushing back to him as fresh as if he was there lurking in the shadows all over again, and no matter how hard he tried he couldn't stop himself reliving the moment over and over. He could hear the sound of tyres moving too fast on the wet road, the sickening crash of crumpling metal and shattered glass. He could smell the gas and blood and smoke of it.

He squeezed his eyes closed and sucked in a steadying breath, hands gripping tight to the edge of the mattress to try and ground himself in the present. It didn't work nearly as well as he'd have hoped.

"Dare I ask why you're still awake?" Loki's voice came from behind him after a moment, pulling Bucky back from his thoughts better than he had managed by himself so far.

He quickly rubbed at his cheeks and glanced back at Loki sprawled out on the mattress, his eyes still closed. "I'm fine," he replied, and Loki cracked open one eye to shoot him a sceptical look.

"You're still tormenting yourself about this?" He sounded less surprised than simply disbelieving.

"Howard was a friend."

Loki finally deemed it necessary to open both eyes, giving up on his obvious desire to roll over and go back to sleep, and he pushed himself up onto his elbows to meet Bucky's gaze head on. "And had you not been the one to kill him, HYDRA would have sent somebody else in your place. There's nothing you could have done to prevent his death."

"Doesn't mean I want to be the one responsible for it."

"So your concern is less that the man is dead and more that you were the one to end his life?"

Bucky turned away, gazing down at his knees as he hung his head. It was such a selfish thought he hated himself for even letting it enter his head. But then he'd lost plenty of friends, in all manner of violent ways, and as painful as it was to lose them, it didn't hurt nearly as much as knowing he'd pulled the trigger himself.

"How am I supposed to tell Tony?" he said.

"You aren't."

Bucky looked back at Loki again. "Wouldn't you want to know?"

"Well yes, but then I am something of a masochist," he replied, his lips quirking into a slight smile. "But for others, when ignorance is less painful than the truth, it's perhaps more of a kindness to let them remain in that state."

Bucky arched an eyebrow as he stared back at Loki. He'd never have expected Loki to give any thought to which was the kinder decision to make in any situation, let alone this one. Of course, that compassion happened to suit his interests this time, which went some way to explain it. And whether or not Loki really cared himself, his point did still stand, Bucky supposed.

"Yeah," he sighed, and at that Loki fell back onto the mattress with a soft thump, his hand moving lazily to Bucky's thigh to give it a gentle squeeze before he dropped it to his side while he closed his eyes again.

"Now would you please get some rest?"

Despite Loki's words, though, Bucky didn't make any attempt to move. He sat watching as Loki slipped easily back to sleep, but before he could settle in at his side and at least try to do the same himself, the sound of their phone ringing came softly from the main room. He ducked out of the bedroom to find it, snatching it up off the dining table and balking at the sight of Stark's name flashing up on the caller ID.

Shit.

Bucky swallowed, his stomach knotting with anxiety, and answered the phone.

" _Good, you are still awake_." There didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary in Stark's tone as he spoke, though that didn't do much to ease Bucky's nerves. His blood still ran cold, visions of Stark declaring war in retaliation for Howard's murder swirling in his mind. " _Did I wake you_?"

"No," Bucky replied. "No, I was up."

" _You've been looking through the files I gave you, right_? _Did you find anything connecting to HDYRA yet_?"

"No," Bucky said, too quickly. "Nothing concrete. Why?"

" _They're putting together a task force to examine all the SHIELD files we handed over, launch corruption enquires and the like. Anything to raise Fury's blood pressure. If there's anything else we can find them, it'll be a plus_."

"Right, of course. I'll— I'll finish looking through the rest of it for you."

" _Appreciate it_ ," Stark said. " _It's probably pointless — if we're going to find anything we've missed, your notebooks are our best bet — but, hey, can't hurt. And I figure the sooner we can sift through everything, the sooner we can get back to your main problem_. _Who needs sleep, anyway_?"

In the background Bucky could hear Jarvis offering what sounded like a rebuttal to Stark's words, but if Stark had paid any notice to it, he didn't respond.

" _Let me know if you find anything_?" he said to Bucky instead.

"Yeah, sure."

The tension escaped Bucky in one long, shaking exhale once Stark had hung up, and he closed his eyes, relief flooding him. So Stark still didn't know. That was the best news Bucky had heard all day. He could still find out on his own at any time, though, which meant Bucky needed to figure out just what the hell he was going to do about this as soon as possible. Knowing that didn't make it any easier, but he still had a little time, at least.

He should have known he'd be proved wrong all too soon.

It was early the next morning when Steve returned to their suite, well aware Bucky and Loki would already be awake. He offered Bucky a supportive smile as he stepped into the room. "How are you?" he said.

Bucky didn't bother to reply. Steve could easily guess the answer to that question.

Sure enough he nodded in response, Bucky's silence saying everything, and came to take a seat with the two of them at the dining table. "Have you thought anymore about what to tell Stark?"

"Plenty," Bucky replied, gazing down at the dregs of coffee he swirled around the bottom of his mug before pushing it away from him with a little too much force, the frustration and pain and anger gnawing away at him struggling for a release. "Not enough to find an answer."

He sighed and got to his feet, as if the pacing might help him think. So far he was inclined to agree with Loki that it was better if they kept it quiet, but going down that path still came with its own problems. Bucky wasn't sure he'd be able to face Stark without his guilt becoming plain as day and tipping him off that something was wrong, and even if he could, it didn't feel right involving the others in his lie as well. Loki wouldn't care — he rarely had any words for Stark that weren't laced with sarcasm or open disdain, anyway — but Steve sure would. And while he'd try his best if Bucky did ask him to lie, he'd never been good enough at it that Bucky would really trust to.

Though if they could somehow manage to avoid Stark for a few days, lock themselves in here under the pretence of studying the reports from him and hope Stark was busy enough elsewhere not to chase them up, maybe by then the shock would have worn off enough for them to perfect their game faces so they could actually get through this.

The door to their suite burst open then, and Bucky had a fraction of a second to wonder if SHIELD had tracked them down again until Stark came storming into the room towards him. "You son of a bitch," he said, his fist connecting with Bucky's mouth before Bucky had time to react.

Steve and Loki were on their feet the instant Bucky was knocked off his, positioning themselves between him and Stark in case Stark lunged for him again. He looked like he wanted nothing more than to take another swing, more vitriol in his eyes as he glared down at Bucky than Bucky had ever seen there.

So this was it, then. He knew. A cold dread settled heavy over Bucky while he gazed back up at Stark in horror. It was all he could feel, oblivious to the warm blood trickling from his throbbing lip, the tang of it thick in his mouth. None of it mattered in that moment. Not when Stark was looking at Bucky like that.

This was so much worse than he'd been afraid of.

"Settle down, Stark," Steve was saying, his palms flat against Stark's chest forcing him to keep his distance as firmly as Steve could without getting rough, and Stark took a step back to shove Steve's hands away with a scowl.

"I think it's safe to say he knows," Loki said to Bucky with the casual air of someone talking about something as trivial as the weather, and Bucky dropped the hand he'd been about to press to his lip to stare up at Loki in disbelief. Of all the times to be flippant. But despite his tone, there was a tightly-coiled tension barely visible in Loki's stance. He was ready to strike at a moment's notice if Stark took another step forward.

"You've been lying to me this whole time?"

"No," Bucky started, almost desperately, as his attention snapped back to Stark, though he didn't have the chance say more.

"Lying by omission, then," he corrected himself. "Still a lie in my book. What, you didn't think a little thing like killing my parents was important enough to tell me? Not high on your list of concerns?"

Bucky opened his mouth to respond, but no words found their way out of it. What could he even say? Stark already knew Bucky wouldn't have wanted to do it. It didn't take the pain away, not for Bucky and certainly not for Stark. Whether he'd had a choice or not, Stark's parents were dead, and it was because of Bucky. There was nothing that could make this better.

"Well, as much as I hate to interrupt such a pleasant time," Loki cut in as he turned to face Stark, his hand stretching out towards him in warning. "Get out."

Stark's eyes flicked to Loki's hand and back up again. "Make a move, you'll regret it," he said.

"Do you really think I'd need to touch you?" His voice was smooth, though there was a hint of menace in it, the smile on his face doing nothing to disguise the threat lurking beneath his calm surface.

It was enough for some of the defiance to leave Stark, and he shot Loki one last glare before his gaze returned to Bucky.

"Tony, I—"

"Don't even think about telling me you're sorry."

"All right, that's enough," Steve said, his tone soft, placating, and he stepped forward again to gently press his hands to Stark's shoulders and steer him back towards the open door. Stark didn't shrug away from the touch this time. "Come on, Tony; it's time to go."

"Why?" he said to Bucky, emotion choking his voice. The word hit harder than any punch he could have thrown, and tears stung at Bucky's eyes as he met Stark's hard gaze. "Why them; what did they do that they needed to die for it?"

"I don't know."

The words weren't much more than a shaking whisper, but whatever Stark might have had to say upon hearing them, Steve manhandled him the rest of the way out of the room before he could speak.

Bucky closed his eyes the instant the door shut behind them, deflated, and when he finally forced them open again Loki was offering out a hand to help him back to his feet. He shrugged it away, climbing up once Loki had taken a step back and ducking into the bedroom to escape the unbearable atmosphere still lingering in the room. He didn't feel much better away from it — which wasn't much of a surprise, all things considered — but the silence in the bedroom was slightly more welcoming, at least.

The door swung open again, though the sound of Loki's footsteps crossing the room towards Bucky didn't follow.

"If you're about to say 'I told you so,' do me a favour," Bucky said, and turned to peer back at Loki stood leaning against the doorframe. "Don't."

Loki said nothing, whether because of Bucky's plea or because he really didn't have any words to offer, and he stepped forward, coming to a stop not too near to crowd him but close enough for Bucky to breathe in his scent, to reach out and pull him closer if he needed to. But as much as he really did need to, Bucky didn't let himself. He couldn't even meet Loki's eyes, staring off to his side without looking at anything.

"How many people like Stark do you think are out there right now?" he said. "People whose loved ones I've killed; people who'd want me dead if they knew who I was." He backed away, putting a wall up between them more out of necessity than any real desire to keep Loki at arm's length, as he eventually met Loki's gaze again. "I murdered your brother, too. Don't you hold it against me?"

Of course, he hadn't known it was Loki's brother at the time, and hadn't known Loki to care that it was his family Bucky had been killing, but what did that change? Everyone he'd ever killed had had friends, family; people they'd cared about and who'd cared for them in return until Bucky had torn their lives apart. Objectively, he'd always known his actions had affected far more than just his targets, but it had never fully hit home until now.

"Murdering my relatives is something you and I have in common." Loki shot Bucky a smile as he spoke that quickly faded when Bucky didn't return it. "You already know my thoughts on this," he said seriously.

"Yeah, I know."

"You would be wise to listen."

Bucky sighed and turned away, eyes falling to the window and the world carrying on as normal beyond it, and he chewed on the inside of his cheek, even when the action reopened the healing split in his lip. The sting was the least he deserved.

"I thought I was coming to terms with it, you know?" he said after a moment, and folded his arms tight across his chest as if he could curl in on himself completely. "I never expected to come face to face with one of the people I've hurt."

Loki's footsteps drew closer again, his fingers brushing lightly across Bucky's shoulder blade once he'd reached Bucky's side, and finally Bucky gave in. He closed his eyes and leant into him, a tiny smile tugging at the corner of his mouth when Loki ran a soothing hand up and down his spine. He was briefly curious where Loki had picked up the gesture, but now wasn't the time to question it.

"It was easier to think of them all as just targets," he went on. "It's bad enough knowing they were people you were taking out, but when they didn't have anyone to miss them, when it wasn't a whole world you were snuffing out..."

He swallowed and cleared his throat to try and rid himself of the lump in it. That was how they'd got through it in the war, fooling themselves that the people they'd killed were only nameless casualties when the 'doing their duty' line didn't cut it. They weren't monsters if it was just a number on a piece of paper, just one more Nazi down.

That attitude wasn't going to help him this time, though.

"It wasn't you," Loki replied.

Bucky nodded, though he wasn't much reassured by Loki's words. He doubted there was anything that would lift his spirits right now. There probably shouldn't be. But he'd accept what little comfort he could find, even if it was wrong to, burying his face in the crook of Loki's neck and staying there a while, until after a few minutes of comfortable silence Loki's hands on his back slowly began to stray lower.

"Are you kidding?" Bucky said as he pulled back to meet Loki's gaze. The moment he did it was obvious that this was probably Loki's plan, distracting Bucky with his audacity if not his body when words weren't enough to do the trick. And he had to admit, it had worked for a moment. Even now a tiny smile managed to fight its way to Bucky's face as he watched Loki feign innocence.

"I'm sorry, is now not the time?" He pulled his hands from Bucky to raise them in surrender as he backed away. "Well all right. It would have made you feel better, though."

"Usually does," Bucky said fondly, and followed Loki across the room towards the door.

Loki paused just before they reached it, though, and looked back at Bucky with a sly grin. "I can't believe Stark managed to knock you clean off your feet," he said while he reached for the doorknob, and Bucky rolled his eyes, his smile stretching wider.

"Shut up."

"It's simply an observation. You're losing your touch, Barnes."

Steve was back in the main room, sat in place at the dining table waiting for them when Loki and Bucky stepped through the bedroom doorway. The concern on his face melted away at the sight of the smile on Bucky's face.

"Where's Stark?"

"I took him back to his room," Steve replied while Bucky and Loki crossed the room to join him. "He seems to have calmed down a little. Not much, but I don't think he'll be back down again. Hell of a morning, huh?"

"Yeah," Bucky said weakly. It wasn't over yet, though. He sank down heavily into a chair and eyed the others watching him. "So, SHIELD's against us; I think we can rule out Stark being on our side right now — how many allies does that leave us with?"

Steve and Loki glanced at each other. "I think you're looking at them, Buck," Steve said.

Yeah, he'd had a feeling that would be the case. He was too emotionally shattered to do more than sigh in response, though. It would take more effort than he could muster to feel any real frustration.

"You're thinking we need to call on someone else for help?"

"We can't stay here."

Loki blinked and looked back at Bucky with a frown. His apparent surprise was unexpected, distrustful as he usually was, though maybe he just wasn't ready to trade their comfortable suite for cheap motel rooms again so soon. "You think Stark will disclose our location?"

"He'd really sell you two out like that?"

"He's just found out I murdered his parents, Steve," Bucky said, his gut twisting unpleasantly at just having to put voice to the words. "He's hurting. You come face to face with the guy who ruined your life, are you really going to stop at one left hook?"

Steve's eyes fell to his lap and he clenched his jaw. He might have been able to turn the other cheek, but he knew damn well that other people wouldn't.

"Then perhaps we should strike before he can retaliate," Loki said.

It was Bucky's turn to be surprised now. He glanced over to Loki sat across from him, incredulous. "You want to kill Stark?"

"Most days," he replied pointedly.

"I think me killing folks is what got us into this mess in the first place," Bucky said, shaking his head to dismiss the concern Loki looked ready to voice again in response. This was less him feeling sorry for himself than just stating the facts. "Look, I don't know what Stark's going to do. Maybe he just needs to lick his wounds a while; get over the shock of it before we can try and work things out. But either way, I think it's best we keep out of his hair for the time being, especially since putting us up here in luxury out of his own pocket isn't going to make him any happier in light of what he knows now."

"What I'd like to know is how he discovered it at all," Loki said.

Bucky was damn keen to know the answer to that question himself. Something Stark had said had struck him as odd, that they'd known 'all this time,' though he'd been too blindsided at the time to draw attention to it. Stark couldn't have known when exactly Bucky had learned the truth, but even if he had somehow, it had been less than twenty-four hours ago. Bucky hadn't even seen him in that time to tell him. It wasn't as if they'd been actively keeping it secret when Stark had found out.

As Loki spoke his gaze had flicked to Steve, no need to put words to the accusation in his eyes, and Steve raised his eyebrows. "You think I told him?"

"Well you are such an honest man, Captain. Are you sure it didn't just slip out?"

"The notebooks," Bucky announced, before Steve could do more than glare back at Loki. A grim smile stretched across his lips as the realisation dawned on him. "They'd been sitting back at the apartment all that time, just waiting for someone to come and tamper with them."

He had to hand it to SHIELD. This was one hell of a way to strike back.


	8. Chapter 8

Things had been quiet for a few days. Bucky couldn't tell if that was a good thing or not. It had to be, he supposed; no SHIELD tracking them down, no Stark lashing out again — though the damage was probably done on both counts already. But Bucky didn't feel any kind of relief at the idea that things might have calmed down. Mostly he still felt like shit.

Being cooped up wasn't helping. Their work was still too far from finished to sit around doing nothing, unable to so much as leave the room for fear of being caught, and in the unbearable quiet Bucky had little more than his own thoughts to occupy his time. And his thoughts weren't nearly as pleasant as he'd like.

"Did this really happen?" Loki said, his voice breaking the stillness of the room as if he'd sensed Bucky's need for a distraction, and Bucky looked over at him. He was sat at the head of their bed, his nose buried in a well-thumbed King James Bible he'd found forgotten under the bed earlier that day during a fit of bored rummaging and his brows drawn in thought. It probably wouldn't be much of a stretch for him to believe in cities destroyed by fire and brimstone, in plagues and floods sent down from the heavens. They'd seen stranger things.

"I guess that depends on your interpretation."

Loki's eyes flicked up to meet Bucky's. He said nothing, but it was plain as day on his face that Bucky's answer wasn't quite enough to satisfy his curiosity. He was waiting to hear more.

Bucky shrugged. "I used to believe it," he continued, and Loki nodded, considered that for a moment before he spoke again.

"What changed?"

"I did," he said simply.

Loki didn't need more explanation than that, though, understanding dawning in his eyes as he filled in for himself the words Bucky hadn't said. He looked back down, turned the page. "You think your god abandoned you," he said.

Bucky sighed and glanced away again. He wasn't really sure what he thought. Maybe he'd seen too much evil in this world and others to believe in that kind of goodness. Maybe that was all the more reason to believe. He didn't know if it mattered. When there were aliens, and monsters, and organisations bigger and nastier than Bucky could have imagined putting all kinds of sinister plans into action to contend with, the question of what he did or didn't believe these days seemed pretty insignificant.

His gaze drifted back to the television shoved into the corner of the room, still on the same 24-hour news channel Bucky had been half-watching all morning. HYDRA was still the hot button issue, though Bucky didn't have much more luck paying attention to the report than he'd had earlier. After a few minutes of staring blankly at the screen, the words slipping in and out of his head without taking root, he gave up and turned back to Loki.

"Do you think—"

"No," Loki said without bothering to look up.

"You don't even know what I was going to say."

"'Do you think enough time has passed to call Stark and apologise yet?'" he mimicked, in a surprisingly good imitation of Bucky's accent. And granted, that had been the question on Bucky's tongue, one he'd voiced too many times already, but what was he supposed to do? He couldn't let Stark sit and stew forever. "He should be the one with the grovelling apology on his lips."

"You're kidding, right?"

Loki slammed the book closed with a loud, dull clap, dropping it to his side while he looked up to meet Bucky's gaze again. "What do you have to apologise for?"

"It's a general courtesy. You kill a person's family, you should be the one to build bridges," Bucky said. Even putting voice to it still left him with an unpleasant sense of queasiness. He'd have to suck it up and get used to that, though. It wasn't like he could undo the things he did.

"HYDRA killed Stark's family. If he can't see that, he's an even bigger fool than I give him credit for."

Loki was matter-of-fact as he spoke, as always, but still Bucky stared back at him in stunned silence for a moment. For the most part he'd grown used to Loki's ruthless pragmatism, whether or not he always understood it, though once in a while he had to sit back and marvel at the dazzling lack of empathy he displayed. Some things you just couldn't unlearn, he supposed.

"You've never been ruled by your emotions?"

"No," Loki said as he picked the book back up, purposefully avoiding Bucky's eyes. He was usually a better liar — though Bucky had a feeling he wasn't trying all that hard this time. "Never."

Bucky smiled. He might as well play along. "So when you decided to come back to Earth..."

"Well I was hardly going to stay on Jotunheim, was I?"

"You could have gone anywhere — still could," Bucky went on with a teasing arch of an eyebrow, his worries pushed blissfully to the back of his mind for the moment. It wouldn't last, but he'd enjoy the distraction while he could.

Loki tried to dismiss him with a scoff, even as a smile played on his own lips. "Don't flatter yourself," he said. "I don't like you that much."

"Then it's strictly the lumpy mattresses and suspicious-looking stains you're here for, huh?" He had to admit, though, they'd managed to find a much nicer motel this time than they usually did. Their room was tiny, hence the low price, so little space between its twin beds that it felt like Steve was sharing a bed with the two of them most nights, his snoring apparently competing with Loki's bony elbows to see which could disrupt Bucky's sleep the most. But it was clean, and comfortable enough. Bucky wasn't going to ask for more.

"Oh, I'm just biding my time," Loki said with a flash of a toothy grin.

Bucky smiled wider himself as he leant in closer, and Loki sat forward in turn, gazing back at Bucky with enough warmth in his eyes to rival the sun. It was a rare sight, one that only Bucky was ever given the privilege of witnessing, but it didn't last long. The moment they heard Steve's key card sliding into the lock it was gone again.

Steve glanced warily back down the hall while he slipped into the room, and with that Bucky was thrust back to reality. The room felt even smaller all of a sudden, the walls seeming to close in again as the threat of SHIELD and Stark and HYDRA crept back up on him and the heavy weight of his anxieties settled back in his stomach. The sensation was so familiar by now it felt stranger to be without it.

"Did anyone recognise you?" Bucky said, and climbed to his feet while Loki shifted back on the bed, his body language closed off again and his usual mask of impassivity back in place.

Steve shook his head, and Bucky breathed a quick sigh of relief. "Have you seen this?" Steve said, tossing the newspaper he'd had tucked under his arm to Bucky. On the front page were shots of various high-ranking government figures being hauled away by the FBI, exposed as members of HYDRA.

"Yeah. It's been all over the news."

Bucky gestured towards the TV as he spoke and Steve glanced behind him to watch the reports for a second, like he needed to see it with his own eyes to trust it was really happening. After so long operating in the shadows, it did feel almost too good to be true to see HYDRA finally dragged back out into the light. "Well at least some good's coming out of this," he said.

He wasn't wrong. If nothing else, Bucky could find some reassurance in knowing HYDRA wouldn't easily be able to slither out of sight again now. And if losing Stark's friendship was the price Bucky had to pay for that, maybe the sacrifice was worth it.

Steve turned back to face Bucky and Loki and lifted the deli bag in his hand with a smile. "So who's hungry?"

Bucky shook his head. The thoughts of Stark that had re-entered his mind had killed off his appetite, his stomach churning unpleasantly once again. Steve slapped a sandwich into his hand anyway.

"Eat," he said firmly as he shuffled down the narrow gap between the beds to take a seat, pulling out another sandwich for himself before handing the bag over to Loki.

Reluctantly Bucky returned to his spot at the foot of the bed. He peeled open the wrapper and took a bite without paying much mind, his attention focused on the paper spread across his lap as he read up on the latest arrests. It was more or less the same story he'd already seen, a little more detail than the news reports were able to delve into but no major revelations that hadn't been covered before. The only mention of any of them was a quick reference to Steve breaking the news of HYDRA's actions. He hadn't expected there to be more, really — all anyone seemed to be paying attention to so far were the people whose dirty deeds were being made public in the wake of the news. It seemed Bucky's connection to HYDRA had gone unnoticed for now.

"Have you spoken to Stark yet?" Steve said.

"No. I'm still trying to work up the nerve to call." His eyes flicked over to Loki as he spoke to find him already watching Bucky, though he kept his thoughts to himself. At his silence Bucky looked back down and took another small bite of his food. He could barely taste it. He wrapped it up again as he slowly chewed and tossed it into Loki's lap for him to finish.

"You'd think he'd have had enough time to get over the shock by now."

"Yeah, maybe." Honestly, though, he wasn't sure what the standard adjustment period was for finding out a friend is actually your parents' killer. Maybe there wasn't one. Or maybe Bucky was just too scared to pick up the phone and find out. The last thing he wanted to do was make this worse, but he didn't see trying to explain things going over well. Why would Stark care whether or not Bucky had really been trying to hide the truth from him? His family would still be dead. Bucky would still be the one responsible.

He was just pushing the newspaper away with a sigh when the phone started ringing, and he fished it out from his pocket while Steve and Loki's attention snapped to him. "Is that him?" Steve said.

"No." Bucky frowned as he stared down at the screen before answering the call. He didn't recognise the number. "Who is this?"

" _Sgt. Barnes_ ," Coulson said in greeting, and Bucky rolled his eyes, getting to his feet again and glancing back towards the window as if he was about to spot a fleet of SHIELD vans pulling into the parking lot. As he did so Loki sat forward, peering at Bucky intently and no doubt straining to hear the voice on the other end of the line to piece together what was going on. But Bucky didn't have time to fill him in.

"How did you get this number?" he said.

" _That's not important_."

It was pretty damn important to Bucky. If Coulson had been able to find their new phone number was it any stretch to believe he could track them down here as well? Bucky's eyes flicked to the window again, the parking lot as empty as it had been seconds before, and stepped back towards the door to slide the deadbolt into place, just in case.

Steve got to his feet almost too fast for Bucky to track the movement, on high alert while he glanced from the door to Bucky. "What is it?" he said quietly, though Coulson spoke again before Bucky could answer.

" _I think it's time we discussed the possibility of a truce, don't you_?"

Bucky paused. Having a resolution to all this turmoil was what he'd always wished for. They'd probably never be able to go back to SHIELD — he doubted he'd even want to after everything that had happened these last few weeks — but he'd been steadily losing hope that he and Loki would ever stop being hunted. Knowing there was still a chance to put this behind them brought no small measure of relief. But it wasn't enough to erase Bucky's suspicions.

"Why now?" he said. If this was based on the fallout of HYDRA being made public, he'd have expected SHIELD to have made contact before now, try to bring them in before they could do any more damage to SHIELD's reputation. No, there was something else at play here.

" _Fury wants to leak your name to the press and expose you as a HYDRA assassin_ ," replied Coulson, and Bucky's stomach dropped. There it was, then. He should have figured this would be his play. Wouldn't do much to help SHIELD, but it would sure as hell make life difficult for Bucky. " _I thought you might like to have a plan to come back in to the fold before he has the chance_."

Bucky hung his head, gazing absently at the floor as he chewed on his lip. If Fury was that keen to take Bucky down along with HYDRA he wouldn't agree to Coulson's idea lightly. Which meant compromises Bucky probably wouldn't be happy to make, and even then Fury could still reject it and go ahead with his original plan.

But whether he liked it or not, Bucky and Loki were assets to SHIELD, ones he'd need in ramping up SHIELD's actions against HYDRA; as satisfying as it might feel selling Bucky out to spite him, burning that bridge wouldn't do Fury any good in the long run. Besides, Bucky had been dead for decades, officially. It would take a whole lot of proof to convince the public that he had somehow managed to survive his fall in the Alps and had been operating as the Winter Soldier all this time.

He couldn't necessarily bank on that possibility, though. And he couldn't guarantee that Coulson reaching out to them now wasn't all part of Fury's plan.

" _Can we meet_?"

Bucky scoffed. "Sure, how about I come strolling into the Triskelion for you?" he said. He didn't need to see Coulson's face to know he was smirking in response.

" _We'll meet somewhere out in the open, nice and public. Just the two of us_."

Bucky raised his eyebrows at that. "No Loki?"

Leaving Steve behind he could understand; he'd support Bucky and Loki however this turned out, but it wasn't his problem. Loki, however, was a different story. He should be involved in any decisions Bucky and Coulson had to make — unless there was a different reason Coulson wanted Loki to stay away. Either way, asking Bucky to come alone didn't do anything to reassure him that Coulson's intentions were as honourable as he claimed.

" _I have to protect my own interest. How do I know you won't take it upon yourselves to go to Fury, and try to use me as leverage_?"

"You really think we would?" Boy, they were just losing friends left, right and centre, weren't they? It was almost impressive, Bucky's apparent knack for alienating the people close to him. Or it would have been, if it didn't hurt so damn much. All he'd wanted to do was keep Loki safe; he'd known his actions would have consequences, but he hadn't thought he'd be risking his friends' hatred for treading down this path.

" _Well I don't know; you two have been all kinds of unpredictable lately_."

No wonder SHIELD was striking below the belt in retaliation, then. But the confirmation that they'd managed to get under Fury's skin didn't do much to comfort him. Especially not now it seemed Fury was getting desperate enough to try and really hurt them — and the people around them.

"No deal."

" _I'm not sure you're grasping the severity of your situation_ ," Coulson said. " _If word gets out that you were the Winter Soldier, this will be bigger than just SHIELD. You could face the death penalty for your crimes. You'll be a fugitive the rest of your life. I can't make any guarantees that Fury will drop the hunt for you and Loki, but it has to be worth a shot, doesn't it_?"

Bucky sighed. He didn't like this situation one bit, though Coulson was right. He didn't like that much, either. "When do you need an answer?" he said.

" _Ideally before you and Loki can start plotting, but I'm not expecting miracles. I'll be at Lower Senate Park in two hours; if you don't show up, I'll know what you've decided_."

He hung up, and Bucky looked over at Steve and Loki both watching him with rapt attention. "Well?" Loki prompted.

"Coulson's talking about a deal. He wants to meet."

"Are you going to do it?" said Steve.

"Not seeing a lot of choice," Bucky replied. He slid his jacket on and grabbed his baseball cap from the top of the dresser. There probably wouldn't be much point in heading out incognito, not when he was walking right into Coulson's grasp anyway, but he'd play it safe. For all he knew there'd be SHIELD agents waiting to spring on him the second he left the motel.

Loki stood and took a step after him. "I'm coming with you."

"No, you're not."

He stared back at Bucky incredulously, though he didn't ask why. He could guess easily enough. "You have no guns; how are you to defend yourself if you're set upon? If I mask my presence, Coulson will have no reason to suspect you haven't come alone."

"No magic, remember?" he said, and from the expression the words brought to Loki's face, he was cursing to himself at that. "I'm not risking SHIELD finding you."

"Bucky," Steve warned, "you know this could be a trap."

He nodded. "I know. But if we do nothing, Fury'll end up outing me as the Winter Soldier. We show up and try any funny business, Coulson has no choice but to retaliate as well. He'll have a contingency plan ready in case I go against my word and bring you two with me." He pulled open the dresser drawer and helped himself to Loki's knives; strapped one against the small of his back beneath his shirt, slid the other into his boot. This might be a stupid plan, though he wasn't dumb enough to go completely unarmed. "Maybe this is a trap, but if it's not it could be our only chance of bringing an end to all of this."

"You really trust Coulson not to betray us?" Loki said, arms folded across his chest and a deep frown on his face.

"More than I trust anybody else at SHIELD. If there's anyone looking to resolve this, anyone who might still be on our side, it'll be him." He pulled his cap down low on his forehead and crossed towards the door, his hand resting on the doorknob while he turned back to face Loki again. "But if things do go south, SHIELD will be coming for you next. I don't come back, you get as far from here as you can."

"And what about you?" Loki stepped forward again as he spoke, eager to keep the conversation going before Bucky could pull the door open and disappear. But he'd have to come up with one hell of a compelling argument to convince Bucky to stay.

"Don't worry about me."

"I do."

There was a hardness in Loki's features when Bucky met his gaze again, a stubborn refusal to let the argument drop, but also growing concern as he stared back at Bucky. He wasn't vulnerable — Bucky wasn't sure Loki ever could be, always prepared for the worst, thinking two steps ahead of everyone around him — but there was more raw emotion in his eyes than he'd ever usually display. At the sight of it Bucky's bluster deflated a little, and he offered Loki what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

"Look, Coulson's not due to show up for a couple hours," he said. "If I head over there now, I've got plenty of time to scope the place before he arrives. Anything seems off, I'll get out, and we'll just have to hope Fury doesn't make good on his threats."

It was hardly his ideal plan B, though hopefully he'd be able to come up with something better before Coulson showed up. And hopefully he wouldn't end up needing to fall back on it.

"I don't like this," Loki said.

"Neither do I," Steve added.

"That makes three of us. But we're in a bind here. If either of you have any better ideas, let's hear them."

They were both silent, and both looking equally unhappy about it.

"Just promise me you'll stay away," Bucky said to Loki. He sounded desperate even to his own ears, but he didn't care. He just needed Loki to do as he asked.

Loki stared back at him for a moment, probably about to argue the point some more. Eventually he huffed. "Fine," he said grudgingly, and not very convincingly.

Bucky glanced over to Steve. His jaw was still clenched in disapproval, though he looked more resigned to the plan than Loki was. "Watch him?" Bucky said, and Steve nodded in response.

Loki was arching an eyebrow when Bucky's eyes flicked back to him. "You don't trust me?"

"Not for a second," Bucky replied with a smile. He pressed a soft kiss to Loki's lips, his hand lingering on Loki's chest as long as he could feasibly keep it there while he pulled away, and finally Bucky slipped from the room.

The confidence he had felt slowly dissipated as he made his way to the park. He'd feel better knowing Steve would be lurking out of sight nearby in case Bucky needed him, but he wasn't about to leave Loki unattended. Hell, Loki would probably try something even with Steve there to keep him in check, though hopefully if he did Steve would be able to handle it. If not, this was sure to turn ugly. And Bucky couldn't risk it going south.

It didn't take him long to reach the park, and he pulled his cap lower, keeping his head down as he passed the occasional group of tourists and people stretched out on the grass soaking up the bright sunlight. It all seemed above board so far, though there were too many places any backup Coulson might bring could hide away out of sight, too many people who could be agents undercover. Bucky pressed on in search of a better spot, warily eyeing the dome of the Capitol Building poking over the trees as he went. It could be worse, he supposed; they could be meeting in the shadow of the Triskelion.

He ducked his head again and carried on down the path until he'd reached the promenade that surrounded the reflecting pool, pausing in his steps at the sight of a smartly dressed figure not too far away, his back to Bucky as he stood watching the fountains. Bucky could guess who it was before the man even turned around.

"Damn it," he said under his breath, and his eyes flicked back in the direction he'd come from. He could still slip away unseen to wait it out and see how things unfold between now and their arranged time to meet, or just say to hell with it and head back to the motel. But if he called this off without even hearing what Coulson had to say he'd be kissing his best chance of ending this goodbye. And maybe if he approached Coulson now Bucky would be taking him by surprise as well, arriving before Coulson's team could move into position. He bit the inside of his cheek and thought for a moment.

Screw it. It was worth a shot.

He stepped forward, head held high but his eyes still scanning the promenade as he went, and Coulson turned when Bucky approached. He offered him a smile small enough that Bucky couldn't be sure he hadn't imagined it, before his face turned impassive again.

"I thought you might show up early," he said by way of explanation, and looked Bucky over. "You look like hell."

"Thanks."

Though Coulson didn't look much better himself. He was put together as always, but there was definitely something haggard in his features, the hint of dark circles under his eyes suggesting he hadn't been getting much more sleep than Bucky had recently.

Before either of them could speak again there was a loud peal of laughter from behind Bucky, followed by the sound of footsteps racing towards them. A group of kids reached the fountain and dropped down onto the steps beside it, panting heavily while they waited for the nearby adults to catch up. Bucky looked back to Coulson to see him taking a step in the other direction, nodding for Bucky to follow, and he led them away from the crowds towards the trees lining the next set of manicured gardens.

"You sure have given us a headache, you know."

Bucky did his best not to smile at that. 'That was the plan,' he wanted to say, but he bit his tongue. There was no sense in being belligerent at the moment. "Not really sweating it when it's doing this much good already," he replied instead. "How many turncoats have you found within SHIELD in the last few days?"

"More than I care to admit," Coulson said grimly as they followed the path to a quieter area. Bucky's eyes darted to the scattered clusters of trees not far from where they were stood, but Coulson continued before he had chance to really study them. "But this wasn't a benevolent act on your part, was it?"

There wasn't anything confrontational in his demeanour when Bucky eyed him again. He didn't even seem surprised. He just looked — well, he just looked like Coulson. It was impossible to tell what was ever going on under the surface.

"No," replied Bucky. "I figure by now I've earned the right to be a little selfish sometimes, though. Someone needs to look out for us."

"I was looking out for the two of you," Coulson said.

Bucky nodded. "Until SHIELD told you not to."

"Well, that's why you and I are here."

Bucky came to a stop, sliding his hands into his pockets as Coulson took another couple of steps, before realising Bucky wasn't still walking beside him and turned back to look at him curiously. "Do you really think Fury's going to go for this?" Bucky said.

He wouldn't be surprised if even after whatever sacrifices he and Loki would have to make, Fury still said no just to spite them, just because it would be more satisfying to make Bucky suffer for disobeying him. He didn't know what the hell they were going to do if that happened.

"No," Coulson replied matter-of-factly, and there was a sudden rustle of leaves, too loud to be the breeze slipping through the trees. Bucky's head snapped round to see a strike team emerging from the shadows.

Shit.

There was a pair approaching faster than the others; they'd be the first to reach him. Bucky snatched the knife at his back and hurled it at one of them as he charged to meet the other. With one hand he grabbed their rifle, forcing it away from where it was aimed at him while he thrust his elbow back into the agent's throat. He snatched the gun from them as they staggered backwards. There wouldn't be enough bullets to take out the rest of the team steadily moving to encircle him — he'd probably be riddled with holes as soon as he fired a few rounds, anyway — but they weren't his target.

Bucky spun back on his heel to face Coulson as he pulled out his own pistol, aiming the rifle square at Coulson's chest. He could practically feel the guns trained on him when he did so, a cacophony of shouted orders for him to drop the weapon filling the air.

"You aren't going to use that," said Coulson. He sounded confident.

Maybe he had a reason to be, though. Bucky stared back at him, his finger curling around the trigger, but even as he held the grip tight enough to make his hands shake, even as he tried to convince himself Coulson deserved it, he couldn't bring himself to fire.

"Drop it!" a voice barked from behind him again, and eventually Bucky threw the rifle to the ground, rolling his eyes skyward as he slowly raised his hands to his head in surrender.

"James Barnes, you are being taken into SHIELD custody," Coulson announced, detached and businesslike, like he wasn't betraying a man he'd once considered a friend, while someone's boot kicked hard into the back of Bucky's knee to force him to the ground.

Bucky scowled back up at him while the person behind wrenched his arms into place, another pair of hands patting him down until they'd found the knife in his boot and taken it, and secured a set of thick manacles around his wrists. They extended up his forearms, heavy enough that Bucky could feel the weight of them in his shoulders as they pulled on his arms uncomfortably. There was no getting out of them; that was for sure. But even if he could have broken free, what then? He was completely outnumbered.

Coulson's expression softened as he met Bucky's gaze. "I'm sorry, Bucky," he said sadly, and a baglike hood dropped over Bucky's head, turning his world black.

He didn't need to see what was happening around him as he was hauled to his feet and bundled into a nearby van. He knew exactly where he was going.

The van began to judder around him as the engine roared to life and they lurched into motion. Bucky kept his head down, tensing against his restraints even as he knew he'd make no headway freeing himself from them, until the sound of traffic eventually dropped away and they sped up, driving along a straight stretch of road, the heart of the city behind them. They stopped for good soon after and Bucky was dragged away again, forced to his knees on the cold ground after a few minutes and the shackles removed from his wrists.

He closed his eyes against the bright light when one of the agents who'd shoved him to the ground yanked the hood from his head, and once their footsteps had moved away Bucky heard a door slide closed and heavy bolts lock into place. He'd have expected nothing less. SHIELD wasn't going to let him escape easily after they'd gone to all this effort to bring him in.

Once he'd adjusted to the light Bucky opened his eyes and looked around. He was in a small, rounded cell, thick glass on all sides, and he got to his feet to peer into the room beyond it. It was a long room, more cells like Bucky's suspended a few feet off the ground along one wall and no natural light that he could see — almost certainly buried far underground. He couldn't see any kind of control room along the opposite wall, but SHIELD was undoubtedly watching.

There was another sound of heavy, scraping metal, and Bucky craned his neck to gaze towards the far end of the room as the door slid open and Fury made his way inside. He didn't hurry himself, strolling down the gangway in front of the cells with his hands clasped behind his back, gazing at each cell as he passed as if he was picturing who might eventually fill them.

"Why am I here?" Bucky said. If SHIELD wanted to expose him as a HYDRA agent like Fury had supposedly been planning, he'd have thought they would've handed him straight over to the FBI to await trial with the others. Keeping him here? They had something different in store for him, and it wasn't going to be good.

"'Why am I here?'" Fury repeated, a slight smile curling at the corner of his mouth. It looked more like a sneer. "You steal highly classified intel, kill or otherwise injure over a dozen SHIELD agents, jeopardise our countermeasures against HYDRA, and you wonder why you're here."

He came to a stop outside Bucky's cell without bothering to make his way across the walkway that would bring him directly to the glass, and they stared at each other in silence for a moment, before Bucky's eyes darted to the other cells.

God, he hoped Loki and Steve had gotten the hell out of the city by now.

"Where's Loki?"

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about Loki," Fury replied. "We're saving him a cell right next to yours."

SHIELD hadn't found him yet, then. It would only be a matter of time, though, if Loki decided to do something stupid like trying to reach him. Bucky's hands curled tight into fists. "If you touch him—"

"You'll what? What are you going to do?" he said, and his gaze flicked from Bucky's face to his cell. "Locked up here, fast running out of friends..."

"You were the one who planted that information about Stark's parents, weren't you?"

Fury looked back at him, folded his arms behind his back again. "Something seemed off about Howard's death at the time," he said as he began to pace along the gangway outside Bucky's cell, Bucky's eyes on him all the while. "He might have been reckless and absent-minded on occasion when you knew him, but he'd become wiser over the years. Careful. Too careful to crash his own car on an empty road.

"After HYDRA was exposed within our ranks and we found out about all the things they'd been getting up to over the years, I wondered if his death hadn't been so accidental after all, so I started looking into it again. And what should I find? The Winter Soldier, pulled out of cryostasis for a mission that very same day."

Bucky closed his eyes and turned away. A fresh wave of nausea rolled over him as the images played out in his mind again, embedded too deep for him to try and shift them. He'd watched the Starks die too many times already. But Fury soon gave him something else to focus on.

"I figured that information might prove useful one day," he went on. "And when you up and left Stark Tower, leaving all those little notebooks of yours behind, it seemed like the perfect opportunity. Never did expect Tony to be the one to find it, though. I guess that's what you'd call a happy accident."

As soon as the words oozed out into the still air Bucky clenched his jaw. So Fury had known all this time, and kept that information to himself to use as a weapon against him. Except Bucky hadn't been the one hurt the most by it. He whirled back to face Fury, ready to fire off whatever insult came to his tongue first, without a care that it would probably only serve to make things worse for him. He needed to say it, and Fury deserved to hear it.

He was already heading back towards the exit when Bucky's eyes landed on him. "You'd better get comfortable," he called without bothering to look Bucky's way again. "I'm sure there'll be plenty of people eager to speak to you before long."

He stepped out through the doors and they screeched back into place behind him, before the room descended into silence, and Bucky was alone.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [What did they do to you?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5259923) by [stormbrite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormbrite/pseuds/stormbrite)
  * [I mean, who wouldn't want this life?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6301918) by [stormbrite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormbrite/pseuds/stormbrite)




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